The Planet Strappers Part 25

By a round-about route he proceeded to the catapults, where Gimp Hines was waiting for him. They had been conversing just a short while ago.

"Did you drop in on Eileen?" Gimp asked right away.

"No. There'll be other occasions," Nelsen laughed. "Someday, if we live, she'll own all the joints in the solar system."

"Uh-huh--I'd bet on it... By the way, there's a grapevine yarn around.

Somebody kicked Fanshaw--the Jolly Lad big-shot--in the belly. You, perhaps?"

"Don't listen to gossip," Nelsen said primly. "Are you serious about going to Mercury?"

"Of course. There are people to take over my office duties. I'll be on my way in a couple of weeks. I think you'd like to come along, Frank."

Nelsen felt an urge that was like a crying for freedom.

"Sure I would. But I'm bound to the wheel. Cripes, though--watch yourself, fella. Don't _you_ get into a mess!"

"h.e.l.l--you're the mess specialist, Frank. Fanshaw isn't here for fun.

And there's been that new trouble at home..."

A Tovie bubb, loaded with people, and a Stateside bubb, both in orbit around the Earth, had collided. No survivors. But there was plenty of blaming and counter-blaming. Another dangerous incident. Glory--with all the ma.s.sed destructive power there was, could luck really last forever?

Frank Nelsen got back to Post One, okay. But later, riding in to Post Three, just in an Archer Six, with a couple of guards for company, he picked up a long-lost voice, falsely sweet, then savage at the end:

"I'm a Jinx, aren't I, Frankie? A vulture. Nice and cavalier, you are. I bet you hoped I was dead. Okay--Sucker...!"

Tiflin didn't even answer when Nelsen tried to beam him.

Nelsen was able to save Post Three. The guards and most of the personnel were experienced and tough. They drove the Jolly Lads back and deflected some chunks of aimed and accelerated asteroid chips, with new defense rockets.

Joe Kuzak, at Post Seven, wasn't so lucky, though Frank had tipped him off. Half of the post was scattered and pirated. Six fellas and the wife of one of them--a Bunch from Baltimore--were just drying shreds that drifted in the wreckage. Big Joe, though he had a rocket chip through his chest, had been able to beat off the attackers, with the help of a few asteroid-hoppers and his novice crew which turned out to be more rugged than some people might have expected.

Frank got to them just as it was over--except for the cursing, the masculine tears of grief and rage, the promises of revenge. Luckily, none of the women had been captured.

Joe Kuzak, full of new antibiotics and coagulants, was still up and around. "So we knocked off a few of them, Frank," he said ruefully in his office bubb. "Several were in Tovie armor. Runaways, or agents?

They're crowding us, boy. h.e.l.l, what a junk heap this post is going to be, to sort out..."

"Get to it," Nelsen commented.

"You've got something in mind?"

"Uh-huh. Coming in, I heard somebody address somebody else as Fan.

Fanshaw, that would be. And I kind of remembered his voice, as he cracked out orders. He was with this group. I'm going after him."

"Good night...! I'll send some of my crowd along."

"Nope, Joe. They'd spot two or more guys. One, they won't even believe in. This is a lone-wolf deal. Besides, it's personal... Shucks--I don't even think there's a risk..."

There, he knew he exaggerated--especially as, huddled up to resemble a small asteroid-fragment, he followed the retreating specks. His only weapon was a rapid-fire launcher, using small rockets loaded only with chemical explosive. He felt a tingle all through him. Scare, all right.

Ahead, as he expected, he saw three stolen bubbs blossom out. There'd be a real pirates' party, like he'd seen, once. They'd have a lookout posted, of course. But the enormity of the Belt made them c.o.c.ky. Who could ever really police very much of it? One other advantage was that Jolly Lads were untidy. Around the distant bubbs floated a haze of jettisoned refuse. Boxes, wrappings, shreds of stellene. Nelsen had figured on that.

Decelerating, he draped a sheet of synthetic cellulose that he'd brought along, loosely over his armored shape. Then he drifted un.o.btrusively close. At a half-mile distance, he peered through the telescope sight of his launcher. The bubbs were close together. The lookout floated free.

Him, he got first, with a careful, homing shot.

Immediately he fired a burst into each bubb, saw them collapse around their human contents. The men inside were like cats in limp bags, the exits of which could no longer be found. Calmly he picked the biggest lumps of struggling forms, and fired again and again, until there was no more motion left except an even rotation.

He soon located Fanshaw. His unarmored body was bloated and drying, his mouth gaped, his shovel teeth were exposed to the stars and the distant, naked sun. Nelsen had to think back to six dead young men and a girl, to keep from feeling lousy. Had Fanshaw been just another guy invading a region that was too big and terrible for humans?

With something like dread, Nelsen looked for Tiflin, too. But, of course, that worthy wasn't around.

Nelsen picked up some s.p.a.ce-fitness cards. Quite a few nations were represented. Joe would have to turn in the cards to the respective authorities. Noting its drift course, Nelsen left the wreckage, and hurried back to Post Seven, before other Jolly Lads could catch up and avenge their pals.

"Fanshaw's groups will fight it out for a new leader, Joe," he said.

"That should keep them busy, for a while..."

Succeeding months were quieter. But the Tovies had lost no advantage.

They had Ceres, the biggest of the asteroids, and their colonies were moving in on more and more others that were still untouched, closing them, against all agreements, to any compet.i.tion.

The new Archer Seven which Nelsen presently acquired, had a miniature TV screen set in its collar. Afield, he was able to pick up propaganda broadcasts from Ceres. They showed neat, orderly quarters, good food, good facilities, everything done by command and plan. He wondered glumly if that was better for men who were pitted against s.p.a.ce. The rigid discipline sheltered them. They didn't have to think in a medium that might be too huge for their brains and emotions. Maybe it was more practical than rough-and-tumble individualism. He had a bitter picture of the whole solar system without a free mind in its whole extent--that is, if another gigantic blowup didn't happen first...

Nelsen didn't see Ramos' new bubb, nor did he see him leave for Saturn and its moons. The guy had avoided him, and gone secretive. But over a year later, the news reached Nelsen at Post Eight. A man named Miguel Ramos had got back, more dead than alive, after a successful venture, alone, to the immediate vicinity of the Ringed Planet. His vehicle was riddled. He was in a Pallastown hospital.

Frank Nelsen delegated his duties, and went to see Ramos. The guy seemed hardly more than half-conscious. He had no hands left. His legs were off at the knee. Frostbite. Only the new antibiotics he had taken along, had kept the gangrene from killing him. There was a light safety belt across his bed. But somehow he knew Nelsen. And his achievement seemed like a mechanical record fixed in his mind.

"Hi, Frank," he whispered hurriedly. "I figured it right. Out there, near Saturn, cl.u.s.ters of particles of frozen methane gas are floating free like tiny meteors. The instrumented rockets didn't run into them, and they were too light to show clearly on radar. But a bubb with a man in it is lots bigger, and can be hit and made like a sieve. That's what happened to those who went first. Their Archers were pierced too. I had mine specially armored, with a heavy helmet and body plating... The particles just got my gloves and my legs. Cripes, I got pictures--right from the rim of the Rings! And lots of data..."

Ramos showed the shadow of a reckless grin of triumph. Then he pa.s.sed out.

Later, Nelsen saw the photographs, and the refrigerated box with the clear, plastic sides. Inside it was what looked like dirty, granular snow--frozen water. Which was all it was. Unless the fact that it was also the substance of Saturn's Rings made a difference.

Saturn--another of the great, cold, largely gaseous planets, where it would perhaps always be utterly futile for a man to try to land...

Ramos, the little Mex who chased the girls. Ramos, the hero, the historical figure, now...

Cursing under his breath, Nelsen wandered vaguely to _The Second Stop_.

There, he saw what probably every s.p.a.ceman had dreamed of. Lucette of Paris swimming nude in a gigantic dewdrop--possible where gravity was almost nil. Music played. Beams of colored light swung majestically, with prismatic effects through the great, flattened, s.h.i.+mmering ovoid of water, while Lucette's motions completed a beautiful legend...

Two figures moved past Nelsen in the darkened interior. The first one was tall and lean. Then he saw the profile of a lean face with a bent nose, heard a mockingly apologetic "Oh-oh..." and didn't quite realize that this was Tiflin, the harbinger of misfortune, before it was too late to collar him. Nelsen followed as soon as he could push his way from the packed house. But pursuit was hopeless in the crowded causeway outside.

A few minutes later, he was in Eileen Sands' apartment. It was not his first visit. Eileen seldom danced or sang, anymore, herself. She was different, now. She wore an evening dress--soft blue, tasteful. Here, she was the cool, poised owner, the lady.

"Tiflin hasn't been around here for a long time, Frank," she was saying.

"You know that his buddy entertained for me for a while. I have an interested nature, but Tiflin never gave me anything but wisecracks.

There are lots of Tovies around--there's even a center for runaways. I don't ask questions of customers usually. And technically, all I can require of a comic is talent. This Igor had a certain kind. What is the difficulty now?"

Frank Nelsen looked at Eileen almost wearily for a second. "Just that Tiflin is somehow involved with most of the bad luck that I've ever had out here," he said, grimly. "And if Pallastown were destroyed, everybody but the Tovies might as well go home from the Belt. The timing seems to me to be about right. They'd risk it, feeling we're too scared to strike back at home. The Jolly Lads--who are international--could be encouraged to do the job for them."

Sudden hollows showed in Eileen's cheeks. "What are you going to do?"

she asked.