The Planet Strappers Part 17

Nelsen was eager and tense, himself. Serene, he was thinking with grat.i.tude. Back to some of civilization. Back to freedom--if there wasn't too much trouble on account of all that had happened. Speeding along, they pa.s.sed the first scattered domes, a hydroponic garden, an isolated sun-power plant.

It was another hour before they reached the checking-gate of one of the main airlocks. Frank Nelsen didn't try any tricks before the white-armored international guards.

"There have been some difficulties," he said. "I think you will want all of our names."

"I am Helen Rodan," Helen interrupted. "My father, Xavier Rodan, here, is sick. He needs a hospital. I will stay with him. These are our friends. They brought us all the way from Far Side."

Within the broad airlock compartment, Lester also got down from the tractor. "I'll stay, too," he said. "Go ahead, Frank. You and Gimp have had enough."

"A moment," gruffed one of the guards with a slight accent. "We shall say who shall do what--pa.s.sing this lock. Difficulties? Very well.

Names, and s.p.a.ce-fitness cards, please, from everybody. And where you will be staying, here in Serene..."

Gimp and Frank got permission to pa.s.s the lock after about fifteen minutes. Without Helen and Les agreeing to stay, it might have been tougher. They spoke their thanks. For the time being, Frank was free to breathe open air under big, stellene domes. But he didn't know in what web of questioning and accusation he might soon be entangled.

Looking back to his first action against Rodan--with a sharpened trowel that had pierced the wall of a stellene dome--eventually leading up to Dutch's death, and very nearly precipitating his own demise and that of his other companions, he wondered if it wouldn't be regarded as criminal. Now he wasn't absolutely sure, himself, that it hadn't been criminal--or Moonmad. Yet he didn't hate Xavier Rodan any less.

"The s...o...b.. might just get sent to a mental hospital--at the worst,"

Gimp growled loyally. "Well, come on, Frank--let's forget it, ditch our Archies at the Hostel, get a culture steak, and look around to see what you've missed..."

So that was how Frank Nelsen began to get acquainted with Serene--fifteen thousand population, much of it habitually transient; a town of vast aspirations, careful discipline, little spotless cubicles for living quarters, pay twenty dollars a day just for the air you breathe, Earth-beer twenty dollars a can, a dollar if synthesized locally. Hydroponic sunflowers, dahlias, poppies, tomatoes, cabbages, all grown enormous in this slight gravity. New chemical-synthesis plants, above ground and far below; metal refineries, shops making electronic and nuclear devices, and articles of fabric, gla.s.s, rubber, plastic, magnesium. A town of supply warehouses and tanks around a great s.p.a.ce port; a town of a thousand unfinished enterprises, and as many paradoxes and inconveniencies. No water in fountains, water in toilets only during part of an Earth-day. English, French, Spanish, German, Greek and Arabic spoken, to mention a few of the languages. An astronomical observatory; a selenographic museum, already open, though less than half completed. And of course it was against the law not to work for more than seventy-two consecutive hours. And over the whole setup there seemed to hang the question: Can Man really live in s.p.a.ce, or does his invasion of it signal his final downfall?

At a certain point, Nelsen gave up trying to figure out all of the aspects of Serene. Of course he and Gimp had one inevitable goal. There was a short walk, Gimp hopping along lightly; then there was an elevator ride downward, for the place, aggressively named _The First Stop_, was nestled cosily in the lava-rock underlying the dust of Mare Serenitatis.

It had an arched interior, bar, stage, blaring jukebox, tables, and a shoulder-to-shoulder press of tough men, held in curious orderliness in part by the rigid caution needed in their dangerous and artificial existences, in part by the presence of police, and in part perhaps by a kind of stored-up awe and tenderness for girls--all girls--who had been out of their lives for too long. In a way, it was a crude, tawdry joint; but it was not the place that Frank and Gimp--or even many of the others--had come to see.

Eileen Sands was there, dancing crazy, swoopy stuff, possible at lunar gravity, as Frank and Gimp entered. Her costume was no feminine fluff; cheesecake, of which she presumably didn't have much, was not on display, either. Dungarees, still? No, not quite. Slender black trousers, like some girls use for ballet practice, instead.

Maybe she wasn't terribly good, or sufficiently drilled, yet, in her routines. But she had a pert, appealing face, a quick smile; her hair was brushed close to her head. She was a cute, utterly bold pixy to remember smiling at you--just you--like a spirit of luck and love, far out in the thick silence.

Her caper ended. She was puffing and laughing and bowing--and maybe sweating, some, besides. The clapping was thunderous. She came out again and sang _Fire Streak_ in a haunting, husky voice.

Meanwhile, a barman touched Frank's and Gimp's shoulders. "Hines and Nelsen? She has spotted you two. She wants to see you in her quarters."

"Hi, lads," she laughed. "Beer for old times?... You look like h.e.l.l, Frank. Brief me on the missing chapter. You had everybody scared."

"Uh-uh--you first, Your Majesty," Nelsen chuckled in return.

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Well, I got here. There was a need.

Somebody decided that I was the best available talent. This is the first step. Maybe I'll have my own spot--bigger and better. Or get back to my own regular self, working Out There with the men."

Maybe it was bad taste, but Nelsen felt like teasing. "Ever hear of a person named Miguel Ramos?"

That didn't bother her. She shrugged. "Still around, though I hope not for long, the buffoon! Who could ever put up with a show-off small boy like that for more than ten minutes? Besides, he's wasting himself. Why should he pick me for a bad influence...? Now, your chapter, Frank."

He told her the story, briefly.

At last she said, "Frank, you must be spiritually all jammed up. Gimp is set, I know..."

In a few minutes more, Eileen introduced him to a girl. Jennie Harper had large dark eyes, and a funny, achy sort of voice. Gimp disappeared discreetly with his date. Frank and Jennie sat at a table in a private booth, high up in the arches of _The First Stop_, and watched Eileen do another number.

Jennie explained herself. "I'm another one. I've got to go where the heroes go. That's me--Frankie, is it? So I'm here..."

She had a perfume. While he was Rodan's prisoner for two and a half months, there were special things that had driven him almost wild. Now he made hints, inevitably.

"I don't need Eileen to tell me you're a good guy, Frank," she said with a small, warm smile. "We're just entertainers. They wouldn't let us be anything else--here..."

It hardly mattered what else they said. Maybe it was fifteen hours later that Frank Nelsen found himself walking along a stellene-covered causeway, looking for Left Foot Gimp Hines. He had memories of a tiny room, very neat and compact, with even a single huge rose in a vase on the bed table. But the time had a fierce velvet-softness that tried to draw him to it forevermore. It was like the grip of home, and the lost Earth, and the fear that he would chicken out and return.

He found Gimp, who seemed worried. "You might get stuck, here, on account of Rodan," he said. "Even I might. We'd better go see."

Nelsen had bitter, vengeful thoughts of Rodan being set at liberty--with himself the culprit.

The official at the police building was an American--a gruff one, but human. "I got the dope from the girl, Nelsen," he said. "And from Lester. You're lucky. Rodan confessed to a murder--another employee--just before he hired you. Apparently just before he made his discovery. He was afraid that the kid would try to horn in. Oh, he's not insane--not enough to escape punishment, anyhow. Here the official means of execution is simple exposure to the vacuum. Now, if you want to leave Serene, you'd better do so soon, before somebody decides to subpoena you as a witness..."

Frank felt a humbled wonder. Was Rodan really accountable, or was it the Moon and s.p.a.ce, working on people's emotions?

Leaving the building, Frank and Gimp found Dave Lester and Helen Rodan entering. They talked for a moment. Then Lester said:

"Helen's had lots of trouble. And we're in love. What do we do, guys?"

"Dunno--get married?" Nelsen answered, shrugging. "It must happen here, too. Oh, I get it--living costs, off the Earth, are high. Well--I've got what Helen's father paid me. Of course I have to replace the missing parts of my equipment. But I'll loan you five hundred. Wish it could be more."

"Shucks, I can do better," Gimp joined in. "Pay us sometime, when you see us."

"I--I don't know..." Lester protested worriedly, like an honest man.

But Gimp and Frank were already sh.e.l.ling out bills, like vagabonds who happened to be flush.

"Poor simpletons," Gimp wailed facetiously afterwards, when they had moved out of earshot. "Even here, it happens. But that's worse. And if her Daddy had stayed human, she might almost have been an heiress...

Well, come on, Frank. I've got my s.p.a.ce gear out of hock, and my tractor sold. And an old buddy of ours is waiting for us at a repair and outfitting shop near the s.p.a.ce port. I hope we didn't jump the gun, a.s.suming you want to get out into the open again, too?"

"You didn't," Nelsen answered. "You sure you don't want to look at Rodan's site--see if we can find any more Martian stuff?"

Gimp looked regretful for a second. "Uh-uh--it's jinxed," he said.

Ramos, scarred, somewhat, along the neck and left cheek, and a bit stiff of shoulder, was rueful but very eager. Frank's gutted gear was out of the blastoff drum, and spread around the shop. Most of it was already fixed. Ramos had been helping.

"Well, Frankie--here's one loose goose who is really glad to be leaving Luna," he said. "Are the asteroids all right with you for a start?"

"They are," Nelsen told him.

"Pa.s.sing close to Mars, which is lined up orbitally along our route,"

Gimp put in. "Did you beam Two-and-Two and Charlie on Venus?"

"Uh-huh--they're just kind of bored," Ramos said. "I even got Storey at the Martian Survey Station. But he's going out into those lousy thickets, again. Old Paul, in Jarviston, sounds the same. Can't get him right now--North America is turned away... I couldn't pinpoint the Kuzaks in the Belt, but that's not unusual."

"I'll finance a load of trade stuff for them," Gimp chuckled. "We ought to be able to move out in about five hours, eh?"

"Should," Ramos agreed. "Weapons--we might need 'em this trip--and everything else is about ready."