Collected Short Fiction, page 474
The ship was a long new paragravity cruiser, black-camouflaged, mounting two heavy spatial rifles in each of her counterbalanced turrets. She was twelve thousand tons of racing, fighting metal, a match for anything in space.
He was less well pleased with the crew.
Commander Mikhail Ivanovich Protopopov was a huge, shambling, bearlike Callistonian, of Ukrainian ancestry. His broad, puttylike face seemed to Anders both sly and stupid. He had a peculiar, blubbery, moronic-sounding laugh. His voice was a hoarse, grating whisper—the result, he said, of years in the care of the Soviet secret police. For he admitted that he had been a member of the unfortunate Neo-Leonist Party, himself fortunate enough to survive the fatally disappointing reception of the Europa Manifesto. Escaping to the Mandate, he had found refuge in the Guard.
Lieutenant Commander Luigi Muratori was a dark little Martian-Italian, with shifty, black, embittered eyes. He walked with a silent limp. He said that he had come to high space in consequence of the bloody suppression of the anti-Aryanist movement. His limp and his scars dated from the pogroms that celebrated the Treaty of Space.
Warrant Officer Suzuki Omura was a toothy, spectacled, efficient little Venusian-Japanese, smiling and over-polite. In a hissing, conspiratorial whisper, he pledged the support of his ambitious but unfortunate race.
“So nice, Captain Anders! So very pleasant, that honorable Interplanet Corporation and my poor brave people join together now. We are very poor and humble, captain. Our only wish is to lead the stupid majority of Chinese and Indonesian Venusians into the greater prosperity of the new order our leaders have planned. Now that we have the support of your honorable rich Interplanet, our plans cannot fail. Everything is going to be so very, very pleasant.”
But Anders wasn’t sure of that.
The spacemen were as polyglot as their officers. For a clause in the Treaty of Space, hopefully but not very successfully intended to promote the unity of the Guard, provided that the officers and men should be selected in the proper ratio from all the major planets.
Commissioner Hood’s inside organization, composed of the ranking Earthman of the Guard, had found forty men all willing, for reasons of birth or politics or their own, to pledge their loyalty for Interplanet dollars. But Anders, after he had met the hostile and inquisitive suspicion of the high officers from the other major planets, couldn’t escape a haunting apprehension.
His orders were secret. He determined to trust his officers and men no further than necessary. When they were alone in the gray-padded cone of the forward bridge, up in the cruiser’s tapered nose, he told Protopopov:
“Officially, commander, our purpose is to rechart a few of the more dangerous swarms of seetee drift. You can tell the men that we are also testing a secret new device for the long-range identification of seetee.”
The Jovian exile nodded, with a cunning glint in his small, slate-colored eyes. He had already been given to understand, by Hood’s “insiders,” that the actual mission of the Challenge was to track down a fifth column of spies and asterite malcontents suspected of preparing secret bases for a blitz against the Mandate by the Martian Reich. In that hoarse, voiceless whisper, he agreed sagely:
“Misdirection is a wise precaution, sir.”
“Our first landing.” Anders stated, “will be on Obania.”
For he wanted to find out if McGee had actually gone there with the Good-by Jane. He hoped, besides, to learn something about the asterite laboratory on nearby Freedonia. For Obania was the home of two more of the suspects on his list—old Jim Drake, and Ann O’Banion.
“Aye, sir.” Protopopov’s dark, waxlike, stupid-seeming face brightened suddenly with an invention of his own. “The Martian officers at the Obania base must be deceived,” he whispered. “Shall we inform them that we are hunting down a gang of refiners, engaged in bootlegging untaxed fuel-uranium?”
“Ex’lent, commander.” Anders grinned.
A shakedown voyage of less than two days brought the Challenge to Obania. The red flash of a photophone challenged them, from the control tower at the tiny base, and gave permission to land. A tall, black, torpedo shape, the cruiser dropped endwise to the polar plateau of the two-kilometer planet.
While Commander Protopopov, with his fable of the illicit refiners, went to pay an official call on the Martian-German subaltern, Anders set out in search of information.
Tall and trim in military black, the Earthman stepped briskly down from the cruiser’s stern valve. Above the tiny, convex field, the sky was depthless midnight. The low, small Sun made a blinding dazzle against the gravel walks, the six-sided tower under the quartered Mandate flag, and everything within the near horizon.
Anders drew his black shoulders straight, with a conqueror’s pride. Luxuriously, he inhaled the cool, thin, synthetic air. Clean and bracing in his lungs, it had a winelike tang of ozone. With a quick and energetic stride, he started toward the commercial docks.
For Obania made him feel a conqueror. Once an atom of dead rock, it was now an island of life. The spatial engineers, with slip sticks for swords, had captured these new outposts for men from the cold eternal enemy night. Paul Anders, like his father, belonged to that mighty race.
When he came into the commercial area, however, the pride of the conqueror fell. For here, beyond the new paint and the brisk efficiency of the military base, the deserted mercantile docks were sagging with neglect. A row of abandoned ore barges, streaked with red rust, jarred his sense of victory.
He paused a moment, frowning. Here the bright triumph of the spatial engineers had ended ingloriously in stagnation and decay. Somehow, he felt, mankind had been cheated out of all the splendid heritage the engineers had won.
What was wrong?
Impatiently, he shook that vexing question off. For, he told himself, he wasn’t a social philosopher. He was just a working engineer, and now he had a job to do. An important job, to help restore the waning, threatened power of Interplanet.
Two shabby old men were laboriously pitching dollars at two small holes in the gravel by a rusty dock, where once the ships had landed. Hastily, they pocketed their coins as Anders approached.
“Do you know a girl named Ann O’Banion?” Seeing their hostile glances at his black uniform, he added, truthfully: “Captain McGee had a shipment for her.”
“Reckon you’ll find her at O’Banion’s old house,” one of them drawled reluctantly. “Down at the other pole. No, there’s her little car, agin’ the rail. She must be down at the Stellar Queen.”
His head jerked vaguely, and Anders went on. He paused to glance at the little electric car. It was a curious, battered machine, looking as if it had been assembled out of junk parts, newly repainted in the vivid color known as seetee blue. Somehow, it made him wonder about Ann O’Banion.
A native of this tiny ghost planet, what would she be? The Earthman couldn’t quite imagine any such cramping imprisonment, because his own horizons had extended from hot Venus to the gray, eternal chill of Callisto. He felt a dim sense of pity.
Beyond the row of rusting barges he found the Stellar Queen. Royal in name only, it was even smaller and more ancient than Rob McGee’s little space tug. Bright meteor blisters, deeply pocked into its rusty hull, showed that it had recently met a fire storm.
On the dilapidated dock beside its open valve was a pile of crates and boxes and fuel drums, all stenciled in green fluorescent paint, Drake, McGee & Drake, Freedonia. Beside the pile stood a huge, red-bearded man, shouting at a boyish-looking girl in blue slacks.
“T’ousand dollar!” The red giant, evidently the skipper of the Stellar Queen, shrugged vehemently. “Million dollar! Keep it. I don’t like fire storm. I tank I’m going back to Ceres.”
“But you promised, Captain Erickson.” Protesting, the girl sounded desperate. “And I just must get these supplies to Freedonia. The Drakes will be starving. They’ll freeze without any fuel. Their air units will stop. You must—”
“Charter one trip.” Captain Erickson shook his blond head, doggedly. “One was enough. I don’t like seetee.”
“I can get you through again,” the girl insisted urgently. Her dark head moved, and Anders saw the silver glint of a space pilot’s badge on her cap. “I know every pebble of that drift. And we just can’t leave them marooned there. You did promise Rob McGee, to keep Freedonia supplied—”
“Where is McGee?” Erickson dourly inquired. That was what Anders wanted to know, but the red-bearded spaceman gave the girl no time to answer. “Let him run that drift if he wants to be a fool. But I ain’t ready to go to hell.”
“Wait, captain!” The girl seemed almost frantic. “Please—”
But the skipper didn’t wait. He turned and ponderously mounted the accommodation steps of the humble Stellar Queen. The girl ran after him, but the rusty outer valve shut in her face with an emphatic clang.
Turning slowly away, she came face to face with Anders. Tears of anger and distress were bright in her gray eyes. A wisp of dark hair trailed out from under her red space cap. Her face and her round bare arms were brown and freckled with rayburn. Tall in the slacks and sweater, she no longer looked boyish at all.
Maybe she wasn’t exactly beautiful. Certainly she was far different from the sleek creations of the beauty salons in Panama City, and even Pallasport. But she looked abundantly healthy and thoroughly angry and not at all as if she wanted pity for being a native of Obania.
“Pardon, Miss O’Banion?”
Anders felt a sudden awkwardness as he introduced himself. He didn’t quite know why, for he had mastered the social codes of four planets. But suddenly he knew he would very much regret it if he had to take this tall, space-tanned girl to the prison on Pallas IV.
IV.
She looked startled.
“B’lieve you’re connected with the engineering firm of Drake, McGee & Drake,” he told her easily. “I’m looking for McGee. D’ you happen to know where I’ll find him?”
The anger in her wet gray eyes changed to watchful hostility.
“Oh! So you’re the Interplanet engineer?” Her cool tone indicated that Interplanetary engineers were quite unnecessary. “Cap’n McGee went to Pallasport,” she told him gravely. “To have a new engine installed in the Jane.”
“He had it installed.” Anders watched her brown, uneasy face. “He left Pallasport five days ago. His papers were cleared for Obania.”
“He hasn’t come back.” He thought she didn’t seem much concerned over the fact that McGee was now some three or four days overdue. “If you don’t believe me, ask your friends at the base. Now, captain, my father’s waiting for me.”
She turned away toward the battered little car. “Wait, Miss O’Banion.” She looked back inquiringly. She failed to hide the dark trouble on her face, or the bright tears in her eyes again. “I . . . I overheard your talk with Captain Erickson,” he said awkwardly. “You were trying to charter his ship?”
She came back to him, hesitantly. He grinned at the wet streaks on her face, and suddenly she smiled in return. Her teeth were fine and even. Her gray eyes, for all the tears, were clear and warm and honest.
“I may as well tell you,” she said slowly. “Probably you know we have a little open-space metallurgy laboratory out on Freedonia? Well, the Drakes are working there, and they need supplies and fuel. Erickson had agreed to supply them while Cap’n Rob is gone. But we ran into a pinch of seetee dust, and now he won’t go back.” Her smile had faded, and she disapprovingly eyed the star of the Guard on his collar. “But there’s no use in telling you.”
“I don’t know.” Anders grinned again, hopefully. “You see, my expedition is making a new survey of the dangerous drift. Evidently, that is going to take us to Freedonia. And we’re supposed to aid civilians in distress, y’ know. S’pose we take your supplies to Freedonia?”
“Oh, thank you!” For an instant Ann O’Banion was beautiful with gladness. Then her face turned grave again and she spoke with sharp mistrust. “But why do you want to do that?”
“Maybe ’cause I like the freckles on your nose.” She drew back a little and then decided not to be offended. Her ray-tanned face was very serious. “You really will do it?” she asked doubtfully. “This isn’t just another Interplanet trick? Promise?”
“We’re going to Freedonia,” he told her. “Take this stuff, if you like. No difference to me.”
“Then I’ll go,” she said suddenly.
“You?” He grinned at her. “We were talking about freight.”
“Please!” He thought her voice was oddly urgent. “I simply must.”
He nodded. “Pleasure.”
“Thank you, captain!” Her wet eyes smiled again. “When are you leaving?”
“Tonight,” he told her. “I’ll have your cargo loaded.”
“Maybe I was wrong, captain.” Candidly, her gray eyes searched his face. “Maybe I was prejudiced, just because you work for Interplanet. Maybe you’re not so—” She flushed and bit her lip and looked confused. But he grinned cheerfully and she smiled. “Please, captain,” she said impulsively, “won’t you come to dinner?”
“Pleasure,” Anders said instantly.
He returned to the Challenge and left orders with Muratori to load her shipment of supplier.
She waited for him with the little car, and he jackknifed himself into the narrow seat beside her.
Ann O’Banion’s tanned hands were skillful at the wheel. She drove him south, over the toppling near horizon. Watching the grace of her bare arms, and her pleasing face with its hints of strength and honesty and humor, and the rebel wisp of dark hair, he wondered more than ever what she really was.
“Obania comes from O’Banion?” he inquired.
Her red cap nodded toward the rusting derrick above an empty, abandoned pit. Hanging from it was a fading sign:
Uranium Prince No. 1
O’Banion Mining Co.
“Dad was the pioneer here, back before the war,” she told him. “Mr. Drake came with him to install the terraformer and the mining equipment and a little refinery. He made a little money till the war. But the Mandate closed the refinery.”
Her voice seemed to hold no bitterness. She was merely stating sober fact. “Rick Drake and I were both born here. He went away to school on Earth. I didn’t have money enough. There is still ore in the rock, but dad would never sell out to Interplanet—and they taxed him out of business.”
She looked aside at his interested face.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this.”
“Because I really want to know,” Anders told her.
The road dipped under black iron bluffs, and they drove through the town. It was a single street of flimsy metal buildings, half of them abandoned now. On one tall, rusty false front, he read another faded sign:
Drake & McGee, Spatial Engineers
“Quite a contrast.”
He was thinking of Karen’s swanky new office. But that thought brought his eyes back to the tanned frontier girl at the wheel. He couldn’t help contrasting her unspoiled simplicity with Karen’s sophisticated loveliness. Something made him smile.
“Am I amusing, captain?”
“Sorry,” he said. “Just wondering what you were.”
“And now you know?”
“I think I’d like to know.”
She drove faster. As the silent little car plunged down over the tiny planet’s curve, he had to resist an impulse to clutch at the seat. They skidded to a breath-taking stop.
Old O’Banion’s metal mansion was boldly perched on a dark, lofty crag. Big and angular, it was embellished with the chromium gingerbread in style forty years ago, stained and tarnished now.
Ann was out before he could extricate himself from the tiny car. He followed her up between the imposing chromium columns. She seemed out of breath, but she gave him a quick little smile before they went in.
She introduced her father. Bruce O’Banion was a big, shaggy man, with tarnished war medals on his faded uniform—he had led a little asterite fleet against Interplanet. His lips had a bitter sag and the veins on his nose and temples were red from too much drinking.
Anders had hoped for some chance reference to the laboratory on Freedonia or the mysterious voyage of Rob McGee or even to the outlawed Free Space Party. But Ann fixed the stooped old man with warning eyes.
“Captain Anders, dad.” Her faintly malicious smile made Anders wonder if he hadn’t been mistaken about any unspoiled simplicity. “He’s the Interplanet engineer who followed Rick and Cap’n Rob out to that runaway rock, and tried to take their diamonds, remember?”
“Eh?” muttered the tall Earthman uncomfortably. “Anyhow, I didn’t get them.”
As charmingly demure as Karen Hood had ever been, she led them into the long front room, old-fashioned and threadbare and very clean. Anders made a confused effort to revise his idea of sophistication. Perhaps it was something that could be acquired as readily on a frontier rock as in the salons of Panama City.
“Yes, Mr. O’Banion, I know Rick Drake,” he attempted hopefully when she had left them alone. “He and his father must be doing some very interesting work. Have you seen that new lab of theirs on Freedonia?”
But old Bruce O’Banion made a derisive snort and began to talk about the greater days before the war. Never a hint of a contraterrene lab, or artifacts from the Invader. Anders rose with relief when Ann called them to dinner.
Evidently she had cooked it herself, and it was good. The roast dehydrated beef and mashed dehydrated potatoes didn’t taste dehydrated. Anders accepted a second portion of dried-apricot cobbler, and observed that Ann looked charming in a blue apron.
The Challenge was standing beside the rusty dock when they drove back to the spaceport. The supplies had been loaded. Ann parked her little car and they took off for Freedonia.
He let her come with him to the gray-walled bridge. She watched the instruments with a lively interest as he set up their course on the pilot-robot, and commented that she had learned her astragation from Rob McGee. He offered to find her a cabin.
