 CHAPTER IV. PART II. Opportunity came near sundown after a shift. Rodin, Dutch, and he had come into the supply and shop dome through its airlock. Lester and Helen, these two introverts, had somehow discovered each other, and were getting along well together, were visible through the transparent wall, lingering at the diggings. Nelson, so Rodin and Dutch unlatched the collars of their helmets preparatory for removing them, as they usually did, if they stayed here a while, to pack new artifacts or stow tools. Nelson made as if to unlatch his collar, too. But if he did it, the gasket would be unsealed, and his helmet would no longer be airtight. Now he told himself, or would it be better to wait fourteen more earth days till another lunar dawn? Hell no. That would be chickenish procrastination. Rodin and Dutch were a good ten feet away from him. He was out of their reach. With the harmless looking trowel he held like a dagger, he struck with all his might at the stelling outer wall of the dome, and then made a ripping motion. Like a monster gasping for breath, the imprisoned air sighed out. Taking advantage of the moment when Rodin's and Dutch's hands moved in lifesaving instinct to reseal their collars, Frank Nelson leaped, and then kicked twice as hard as he could in rapid succession, at Dutch's stomach first, then Rodin's. They were down, safe from death, since they had managed to relatch their collars. But with a cold fury that had learned to take no chances with defeat, Nelson proceeded to kick them again, first one, and then the other, meaning to make them insensible. He got Dutch's pistol. He was a shade slow with Rodin. You won't get anything that is mine, he heard Rodin grunt. Frank managed to deflect the automatic's muzzle from himself, but Rodin moved it downward purposefully, lined it up on a box marked dynamite, and fired. Nelson must have thrown himself prone at the last instant, before the ticklish explosive blew. He saw the flash and felt the daisiness thud, though most of the blast passed over him. Results far outstripped the most furious intention of his plan, and became not freedom, but a threat of slow dying. An ordeal, as the sagging dome was torn from above him, and supplies, air-restorer equipment, water, and oxygen flasks, the vitals, and the batteries of the solar electric plant, all for the most part hopelessly shattered, were hurled far and wide, along with the relics from Mars. The adjacent garden and quarter's domes were also shredded and swept away. Dazed, Nelson still got Rodin's automatic, picked himself up, saw that Dutch and Rodin, an armor, too, had apparently suffered from the explosion no worse than he had. He glanced at the hole in the lava rock still smoking in the high vacuum. Most of the force to the blast had gone upward. He looked at Helen's toppled tomatoes and petunias, yes petunias, where the garden dome had been. Oddly they didn't wilt at once, though the little water in the hydroponic troughs was boiling away furiously, making frosty rainbows in the slanting light of the sun. Fragments of a solar lamp to keep the plants growing at night lay in the shambles. Rodin and Dutch were pretty well knocked out from Frank Nelson's footwork. Now Dave Lester and Helen Rodin came running. Lester's face was all stunned surprise. Helen was yelling, I saw you do it, you murderer. When she kneeled beside her father, Frank got her gun too. He felt an awful regret for a plan whose results far surpassed his intentions, but there was no good in showing it now. Someone had to be in command in a situation which already looked black. Frank, I didn't suppose, Lester stammered. Now, what are we going to do? All that we can do. Try to get out of here, Frank snapped back at him. With some shreds of steline he tied Dutch's arms behind his back and lashed his feet together. Then he pulled Helen away from Rodin. Hold her lest he ordered. Maybe I overplayed my hand, but just the same I still think I'm the best to say what's to be done and maybe get us out of a jam. And I can't have Helen or Rodin or anybody else doing any more cock-eyed things to screw matters up even worse than they are. Nelson trust Rodin up too, then searched Rodin's thigh pouch and found a bunch of keys. You come along with me, lesson Helen, he said. First we'll find out what we've got left to work with. He investigated the rocket. That the blast had toppled it over wasn't the worst. When he unlocked its servicing doors he found that Rodin had removed a vital part from the nuclear exciters of the motors. His and Lester's blast-off drums were still in the freight compartment, but the Ionics and air restores had been similarly rendered unworkable. Their oxygen and water flasks were gone. Only their bubs were intact, but there was nothing with which to inflate them. When Frank examined the sun-powered tractor he found that tiny platinum plates had been taken from the thermal couple units. It was clear that with paranoid thoroughness Rodin had concentrated all capacity to move from the camp's vicinity in himself. He had probably locked up the missing items in the supply dome, and now the exploding dynamite had ruined them. Exploring the plane Nelson even found quite a few of the absent parts, all useless. Only one oxygen flask and one water flask remained intact. Here was a diabolical backfiring of schemes all around. Returning to Rodin and Dutch he examined their archers through their servicing ports. Rodin's was, has the manufacturer intended it, but Dutch's was Jimmy the same as his and Lester's. Nelson swung Helen around to face him and unlatched the port at her archers' shoulder. He put even you on a short-stringed kid, he pronounced bitterly after a moment. Well, at least we can give you his nuclear battery for a while and let him have his chemical cell back. Helen seemed about to attack him, but then her look wavered. Confusion and pain came into her face. Nelson was aware that he was doing almost all of the talking, but maybe this had to be. So we've got a long walk, he said, towards the Toby settlement, in archers of mostly much reduced range. Whose fault the situation is can't change anything a bit. This is a life or death proposition. With lasting time the most important factor. So let's get started. Has anybody got any suggestions to increase our chances? Both Rodin and Dutch had come to. Rodin said nothing. His look was pure poison. Dutch sneered. Smart damn kid you are, huh, Nelson? You think. Wait till you and your mumbling crackpot pal get out there. I'll watch both of you go bust, squirt. Lester seemed not to hear these remarks. All that gypsum, Frank, he said, the water and oxygen mineral. But this is for real. There's no gimmick, no energy source to release it and save us. Frank Nelson untied Rodin's and Dutch's feet, and at pistol point ordered them to move out ahead. From the charts he knew the bearing straight toward the constellation Cassiopeia. At this hour a crossed an arm of Mare Nova. Then along a pass that cut through the mountains. Eight hundred hopeless miles. Well how did he know, really? How much could a human body take? How fast could they go? How long would the chemical batteries actually last? What breaks might appear? They loped along, even Rodin hurrying. They made a hundred miles in the hours before darkness. With just Helen's shoulder lamp showing the way they continued onward through the mountains. Was there truly much to tell in that slow, losing struggle? Nelson attached the oxygen flask to his air system for a while, relieving the drain on his battery. Then he gave the flask to Lester. Later he began to move the nuclear battery around to all the archers to conserve all of the other batteries a little. Soon they filled the drinking water tanks of their armor so that they could discard the flask, whose slight weight seemed to have tripled. After twenty hours the power of the chemical batteries began to wane. David Lester, hovering close to Helen, muttered to himself or to her. Rodin, still marching quite strongly, retreated into an unreality of his own. Have another scotch on the rocks, Ralph, he said genially. I knew I'd make it. No bell prize. Oh, you have no idea what I went through. Most of my staff dead. But it's over now, Ralph. Another good stomach-warming scotch. Damn loony squirts cracking up Dutch screamed suddenly. He began to run, promptly falling into a volcanic crack, the bottom of which couldn't even be found with the light. Fortunately he wasn't wearing the nuclear battery just then. Somehow Lester remained cool. It was as if, with everyone else scared, too, and nobody to show superior courage, he had found himself. The batteries waned further. The cold of the inky lunar night, much worse than that of interplanetary space, where there is practically always sunshine, began to bite through the installation of the archers, and power couldn't be wasted on the heating coils. Worse was the need for rest. They all lay down at last, except Frank Nelson, who moved around, clipping the nuclear battery into one archer for a minute, to freshen the air, and then into another. It was the only trick or gimmick that they found. After a while Lester made the rounds while Nelson rested. They got a few more miles by swapping batteries in quick succession. But the accumulating carbon dioxide in the air they breathed made them sleepier. They had to sit down, then lie down. Frank figured that they had come something over a quarter of the eight hundred miles. This was about the end of Frank Nelson, would-be planet strapper from Jarveston, Minnesota. Well, his coffin would be a common one, an archer five. Somehow he thought of a line from Kipling. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, and blaming it on you. He tried to clip the nuclear battery back into Helen's armor again. She might make the remaining five hundred something miles alone. He just barely managed to accomplish it. There was still a little juice from his chemical cell, feeding his helmet-phone. Now he thought he heard someone singing rockulously. One of those improvised, doggerel songs of Spaceman and Moonman. Folklore almost. If this goddamn dust just holds its crust, I'll get on the hell if my gear don't bust. Hey! Nelson gurgled thickly into his phone. Hey! Then it was as if he sort of sank. Hell was real all right, because with needles in his eyes and all through his body, Nelson seemed to be goaded on by imps to crawl an infinite weariness through a hot steel pipe to face old Nick himself, or was it somebody he met before? Maybe he asked, because he got an answer from the grinning, freckled face bending over him, as he lay armorless on a sort of pallet under the taunt-stelling roof of a moon-tent. Sure, Frankie, me, Gimp Hines, the itinerant traitor and repairman of the lunar wilderness, what a switch! Didn't think you'd goof. The bunch, especially two and two, couldn't contact you. So I was sort of looking, knowing about where you'd be. Just made it in time. Less and the girl, and that ornery professor or whatever, are right here, too, still knocked out with a devil-killer. You've been out twenty hours yourself. I'll fill you in on the news. Just shut up and drink up. Good earth whiskey. A hundred bucks just to shoot a fifth into orbit. Frank gulped and coughed. Thanks, Gimp. His voice was like pumice. Shut up, I said. Gimp ordered arrogantly. About me, first. When I got the serene, I could have convinced them that I was worth a job. But I'm independent. I hawked my gear, bought some old parts, built myself a tractor and trailer, loaded it with water, oxygen, frozen vegetables, spare parts, cigarettes, pin-up pictures, liquor, and so forth, and came traveling. I didn't forget tools. You'd be astonished by what you can sell and fix, and for what prices, out in the isolated areas, or what you can bring back. I even got a couple of emeralds. As big as pigeon eggs. I'm getting myself a reputation besides. What difference does just one good leg make? At only one-sixth earth-grave. You'd still hop along, even when you don't ride. And everywhere I go, I leave the left bootprint behind in the dust, like a record that could last a thousand ages. I'm getting to be left foot, the legend. Nelson cleared his throat, found his voice. Cocky, aren't you, pal? He chuckled. So another thing was happening in reverse from what most people had expected. Gimp Hines was finding a new, sureer self off the earth. It's all right, Gimp, Nelson added. I figured that I saw your tracks and your tractor-treadmarks up in the hills just before I decided to break away from Rodin. Then he was telling the whole story. Yes, I was there, Gimp said at the end. I missed you on the first pass, prospected for a couple of earth days, found a small copper deposit. High ground gave me a good position to receive short-wave messages. Thought I heard your voices a couple times, so I doubled back and located what is left of Rodin's camp and yours and Les's initialed blast-off drums, which I brought along in my trailer. Lucky! A trader needs an atom-powered tractor that can move at night. I followed your tracks. Though, going through rough country, you were screened from my radio calls until I was almost on you. Though on my first pass, when you were still in camp, I guess, I could have reached you by bouncing a beam off a mountaintop had I known. Well, it doesn't matter now. I'm out of stock again and full of money. Got the head back to Serene. You were trying for the Tovey station, huh? What else could we do? I see what you mean, Frank, if you could have made it and missed getting shot by some trigger-happy guard, where frontier isn't even supposed to exist, they probably would have held you for a while and then let you go. About the rest of the bunch, Frank, Nelson prompted. The Kuzaks got to the belt OK, though they had to fight off some rough and humorous characters. Story reached his Mars. Charlie Reynolds and two and two got to Venus and hooked up with the exploring expedition. Tiflin, who knows? Ramos. Ah, a real disappointing case, Frank. Darn wild idiot, who ought to be probing the farther reaches of the solar system, got himself a job in a chemical plant in Serene. A synthesizing retort exploded. He was burned pretty bad, just out of the hospital when I last left. It was on account of a woman that he was on the moon at all. Eileen, the queen of Serene Gimp? Is that so, too? Yep, sort of. R. Eileen, back in Jarveston, Ramos found out that she was there. She's a good kid. Even admits that she hasn't got much competition. On a mostly yet masculine world. Well, I guess we start rolling, huh? I didn't want to jolt any of you poor sick people, so I didn't. Let's get you all into archers, for which I have a few spare parts left. Then, after we roll up the sealed air-conditioned tent of a familiar material, we can be on our way. Just let's watch Rodin, that's all Frank Nelson warned. Sure, we'll keep him good and dopey with tranquilizers. They aroused Dave Lester and Helen Rodin. Help them armor up, explain briefly what the situation was. Stuffed Xavier Rodin into his archer and climbed with him into the sealable cab of the tractor. Here they could all remove their helmets. After several hours of bumping over rugged country with the tractor's headlights blazing through the star-topped blackness, they reached a solid trail over a mare. They could zip along almost, like on a highway. There were other rough stretches, but most of the well selected route was smooth. Half the time Nelson drove while Gimp rested or slept. They ate Spaceman's gruel, heated on a little electric stove, and after a certain number of hours they climbed over the side of the moon and made their own sunrise. After that the going seemed easier. Gimp and Frank were just about talked out by then. Helen Rodin looked after her slumbering father. Otherwise she and Lester seemed wrapped up in each other. Frank hardly listened to the few words they exchanged. They kept peering eagerly and worriedly along the trail that wound past fantastic scenery. Nelson was eager intense himself, serene he was thinking with gratitude, back to some civilization, back to freedom, if there wasn't too much trouble on account of all that had happened. Speeding along they passed 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 Nelson didn't try any tricks before the white-armored international guards. There have been some difficulties, he said. I think you'll want all of our names. I am Helen Rodin, Helen interrupted. My father, Xavier Rodin, here, is sick. He needs a hospital. I will stay with him. These are our friends. They brought us all the way from the far side. In 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, passing this lock. Difficulties? Very well. Names and space fitness cards, please, from everybody. And where you will be staying here in serene? Gimp and Frank got permission to pass 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, sterling domes. But he didn't know in what web of questioning and accusations he might soon be entangled. Looking back to his first action against Rodin, with a sharpened trowel that had pierced the wall of the sterling 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 moon-mad. Yet he didn't hate Xavier Rodin any less. The SOB might just get sent to a mental hospital at the worst. Gimp growled loyally. Well, come on, Frank, let's forget it. Ditch our arches at the hostel. Get a cultured steak and look around to see what you've missed. So that was how Frank Nelson 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, cabbage, 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, glass, rubber, plastic, magnesium. A town of supply warehouses and tanks around a great spaceport. A town of a thousand unfinished enterprises. And as many paradoxes and inconveniences. 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 Selina graphic 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 space, or does his invasion of it signal his final downfall? At a certain point Nelson gave up trying to figure out all of the aspects of serene. Of course he and Gimp had won inevitable goal. There was a short walk, Gimp hopping along lightly. Then there was an elevator ride downward. For a place aggressively named, the first stop was nestled closely in the lava rock underlying the dust of Mare Serentitis. 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 pixie, 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 firestreak in a haunting, husky voice. Meanwhile, a barman touched Frank and Gimp's shoulders. Hines and Nelson, she has spot at you too. She wants to see you in her quarters. High lads, she laughed, there for old times. You look like hell, Frank. Brief me on the missing chapter. You had everybody scared. Ah, you first, Your Majesty. Nelson 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 my 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 Nelson felt like teasing, ever here, 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 a 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. Jenny Harper had large, dark eyes and a funny, achy sort of voice. Gimp disappeared discreetly with his date. Frank and Jenny sat at a table in a private booth, high up in the arches of the first stop, and watched Eileen do another number. Jenny 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 Rodin'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 Nelson found himself walking along a stelling 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 and a vase on the bed table. But the time had a fierce velvet softness that tried to draw him to it for evermore. It was like the grip of a 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 Count of Rodin, he said. Even I might. We'd better go see. Nelson had bitter, vengeful thoughts of Rodin 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, Nelson, he said, and from Lester. You're lucky, Rodin 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 humble wonder. Was Rodin really accountable, or was it the moon in space, working on people's emotions? Leave in the building, Frank and Gip found Dave Lester and Helen Rodin 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? Don't know. Get married, Nelson 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 own you five hundred. Wish it could be more. Shucks, I can do better, Gimp joined in. Pay us some time, when you see us. I don't know, Lester protested worriedly, like an honest man. But Gimp and Frank were already shellied 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 space gear out of hawk, and my tractor sold. An old buddy of ours is waiting for us at a repair and outfitting shop near the spaceport. I hope we didn't jump the gun, assuming you want to get out in the open again. You didn't, Nelson answered. You sure you don't want to look at Rodin's sight, see if we can find any more Martian stuff? Gimp looked regretful for a second. 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 blast-off drum and spread around the shop. Most of it was already fixed. Ramos had been helping. Well, Frankie, here's one loose goose who's really glad to be leaving Luna, he said. Are the asteroids all right with you for a start? They are, Nelson told him. Passing close to Mars, which is lined up orbitally along a route Gimp put in, did you beam two and two and Charlie on Venus? They're just kind of bored, Ramos said. I even got story at the Martian Survey Station, but he's going out into those lousy thickets again. Old Paul and Jarveston sounds the same. Can't get him right now, North America is turned away. I couldn't pinpoint the kusics 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, huh? Should, Ramos agreed. Weapons, we might need them this trip, and everything else is about ready. So, we'll get a good meal and then buy our load, Frank enthused. He felt the texture of his deflated bub. The hard lines of deep space equipment quickened his pulses. He forgot the call of earth. He felt as free and easy as a hobo with cosmic dust in his hair. Blast off from Serene's port, even with three heavily loaded trader rockets was comparatively easy and inexpensive. Out in orbit, three reunited bunch members inflated and rigged their bubs. For Nelson, it seemed an old, splendid feeling. They lashed the supplies from the trader rockets into great bundles that they could tow. Before the rockets began to descend, the trio of beautiful, fragile rings pushed by ions streaming from their centers started to accelerate. It's the life of Riley, Paul. Ramos was beaming back to Jarveston, Minnesota, not many hours after Frank Nelson gimp-hines, and he started out from the moon with their ultimate destination. After the delivery of their loads of supplies to the Cusacks, tentatively marked in their minds as Palestine on Pallas, the Golden Asteroid. Ramos was riding a great bale, drawn by his spinning and still accelerating ring to the hub of which it was attached by a thin steel cable passed through a well-oiled swivel bolt. One of his booted feet was hooked under a bale lashing to keep him from drifting off in the absence of weight. He held a rifle casually but alert across his knees. Its needle-like bullets were not intended to kill. They were tiny rockets that could flame during the last second of a long flight honing in on a target by means of a self-contained and marvelously miniaturized radar guidance system. Their tips were anesthetic. The parabolic antenna mounted on the elbow of Ramos's archer swung a tiny bit, holding the beam contact with Paul Hendricks automatically after it was made. Yet Ramos kept his arm very still to avoid making the slender beam swing wide. Meanwhile, he was elaborating on his first statement. Not like before, no terrestrial ground-orbit weight problems to beat this trip, Paul. And we've got some of about everything that the moon could provide, thanks to Gimp, who paid the bill. Culture stakes in the shadow refrigerators. That's all you need out here to keep things frozen, just a shadow. We've got hydroponic vegetables, tinned bread, chocolate, beer. We've got sun stoves to cook on. We've got numerous luxury items not meant for the stomach. We're living high for a while, anyhow. Of course, we don't want to use up too much of the fancy stuff. Tell Otto Kramer about us. Frank Nelson and Gimp Hines, who were riding the riggings of their respective bubs, which were also hauling big bales of supplies, were part of the trans-spatial conversation, too. There was enough leakage from Ramos' tightened beam here at its source for them to hear what he said. But when, after a moment, Paul Hendricks answered from the distance, easy with the talk fella, over-interested people might be listening, they suddenly forgot their own enthusiasm. They realized their hides tingled unpleasantly. Ramos' dark face hardened. Still, he spoke deprecatingly. Shucks, Paul. This is a well-focused beam, besides its pointing earthward and sunward, not toward the belt where most of the real mean folks are. But he sounded defensive, and very soon he said, Bye for now, Paul. A little later, Frank Nelson contacted Art Cusack out in the asteroid belt across a much greater stretch of space. He thought he was cautious when he said, We're riding a bit heavy for you guys. But, after the twenty-minute interval it took to get an answer back over ten light minutes of distance, traversed twice, a hundred and eighty-six thousand miles for every second, spanned by slender threads of radio energy, which were of low power, but of low loss, low dispersal, too, explaining their tremendous range, Art Cusack's warning was carefully cryptic, yet plain to Nelson and his companions. Thanks for all the favors, he growled dryly. Now keep still and be real thoughtful, Frankie Boy. That also goes for you other two naive boneheads. Open space, like open, scarcely touched country, had produced its outlaws. But the distances were far greater. The pressures of need were infinitely harsher. Yeah, there's a leader named Fessler, Gimp Rasp, with his phone turned low so that only his companions could hear him. But there are other names, Art's right. We'd better keep our eyes open, and our mouths shut. Asteroid miners, who had had poor luck, or who had been forced to kill to win even the breath of life, colonists who had left Mars after terrible misfortunes there. Adventurers soured and maddened by months in a vacuum armor, smelling the stench of their own unwashed bodies. Men flushed with gains and seeking merely to relieve the tension of their restrained artificial existences in a wild spree. Refugees from rigid tovy conformism. All these composed the membership of the wandering robbing, hijacking bands, which, though not numerous, were significant. Once most of these men had been reasonably well balanced individuals, easily lost in a crowd. But the big vacuum could change that. Ramos, Hines, and Nelson had heard the stories. Now their watchfulness became almost exaggerated. They felt their inexperience. They made no more radio beam contacts. One of them was always on lookout, clutching a rifle, peering all around, glancing every few seconds at the miniaturized radar screen set inside the collar of his helmet. But the spherical sky remained free of any unexplained blips or luminous speck. Fragments of conversation picked up in their phones, widely separated asteroid miners, talking to each other for the most part, obviously came from far away. There was a USSF bub cruising a few million miles off. Otherwise, the enormous emptiness was safely and perversely empty all around. They kept accelerating. For a planned interval, they enjoyed all the good things. They found that masculine guardedness and laziness went well together. They ate themselves full. Like Mitch's story had once done, they all started hydroponic gardens inside their bubs. In the pleasant steamy sun warmth of those sterling interiors, they bounced back and forth from elastic wall to elastic wall, with gravity temporarily at zero because they had stopped the spin of their bubs. Thus, they loosened their muscles, worked up a sweat. Afterwards, they dozed, slept, listened to beamed radio music or taped recordings of their own. They smiled at pin-up pictures, read microfilm the books, through a viewer, looked at the growing plants around them. There was an arrogance in them, because they had succeeded in bringing so much of home out here. There was even a mood like that of a lost, languid beach in the tropics. And how was that possible? With only a thin skin of sterling between them and frigid nothing? Ramos said just about what he had said long ago, it seemed now. Nuts, the big vacuum ain't so tough. But he amended it quickly. Yeah, I know, Frank, don't scowl. When you aren't looking, it can up and kill you. Like with my Uncle Jose, only worse. He was a powder monkey in Mexico. It got so he thought Dynamite was his friend. Well, there wasn't even anything to put in his coffin. The luxurious interlude passed, and they reverted mostly to Spartan meals of space gruel, except for some fresh, grown lettuce. Mars became an agate bead. Then a lazy sphere, with those swirled almost fluid markings, where the spores of perhaps sentinent vegetable life followed the paths of thin winds, blowing equator words from the polar caps of whorefrost. The three sterling rings bumped lightly on the ten-mile chunk of captured asteroid rock and nickel iron that was Phobos. Mars is nearer moon. Gravitation was almost nil. There was no need here for rockets to land or take off. The sun-powered ionics were more than enough. A small observatory, a UN tended, between ground and orbit rocket port, and a few hydroponic garden domes nestled in the jaggedness, were all that Phobos had, other than the magnificent view of the red planet below. Gimp hines his freckled face shone in the ruddy light. I'm going down, he declared, just for a few days to look around near the survey station. You guys? Ramos shrugged, almost disinterested. People have been there, some still are, and what good is poking around the station. But who wants to goof up, going into the thickets? Others have done that often enough. Me for Palestine, and maybe, lots further, pal. Frank Nelson wasn't that blasé. On the moon he had seen some of the old Mars of advanced native technology, now long extinct. But there was also the recent Mars of explorers, and then footloose adventurers wondering what they could find to do with this quiet, pastel-tinted world of tremendous history. They had come, the colonists, with their tractors and their rolls of stilene, to make sealed dwellings and covered fields in that thin, almost oxygen-less atmosphere. But their hopes to find peace and isolation from the crowded and troubled earth by science and hard work, even in so harsh a place, had come in the conflict with the third Mars that must have begun soon after the original inhabitants had been destroyed. Though maybe it had had its start billions of years before on the planets of another star, the thickets had seemed harmless. Was this another different civilization that had risen at last in anger using its own methods of allergy, terrible repellent nostalgia, and mental distortions? Frank felt the call of mystery, which was half-dread. But then he shrugged, Uh-uh, Gimp, I'd like to get down too, but the gravity is twice that of the moon. And getting up and down isn't so easy. Besides, once when I made a stopover in space after a nice short hop, I got in the trouble. I'll pass this one up. I'd like to talk to Mitch Storey, though. They all tried to reach him, beaming the survey station at the edge of Cyatris Major, the great equatorial wedge of blue-green growths on the floor of a vanished ocean first. Mitch Storey is not around right now, a young man's voice informed them. He wandered off again three days ago, does it often. No, we don't know where to reach him. Widening their beams over the short range of considerably less than four thousand miles, they tried to call Mitch directly. No luck. Contact should have been easy, but of course he could be wandering with his Archer helmet phone turned off. Considering the reputation of Mars, Nelson was a bit worried. But he had perhaps a treacherous belief that Mitch was special enough to take care of himself. Ramos was impatient. We'll hook old Mitch on our party line sometime, Frank, he said. Right now we ought to get started. Space is still nice and empty ahead. Towards the Cusacks and Palestine. That condition might not last. Gimp, are you honest to Gosh set on going down to this dried-up museum world? Uh-huh. See you soon, though, Gimp answered grinning. I'll leave my bub and my load of supplies up here on Phobos. Be back for it in probably a week, and there'll be a freight-bub cluster or something for me to join up with and follow you out. Nelson and Ramos left Gimp Hines before he boarded the winged, skipped-glide rocket that would take him below. Parting words flew back and forth. See you, take care. Over the Milky Way, suckers. Then they were standing off from Mars and its two moons. During the next several Earth days of time, they accelerated with all the power that their bub ionics could ring out of the sunshine, weakened now with distance. They knew about where to find the Cusacks, but contact was weeks off. When they were close enough, they could radio safely, checking the exact position of Art and Joe's supply post. And they knew enough to steer clear of Ceres, the largest asteroid, which was Tovi occupied. All the signs were good. They were well armed and watchful. They should have made the trip without trouble. Ahead, dim still with distance, but glinting with a pinkish metallic shine, which made it much brighter than it would otherwise have been, was Pallas, which Ramos watched like a beacon. El Dorado, he said once cockily, as if he remembered something from the Spanish part of his background. They got almost three-quarters across that unimaginable stretch of emptiness before there was a bad sign. It was a cat-call, literally, in their helmet-phones. Meow! It was falsely, plaintiff, and innocuous. It was a maliciously childish promise of trouble. A little later there was a chuckle. Be cavalier, fellas. Watch yourselves. I mean it. The tone had a strange intensity. Ramos was on lookout then, with eyes, radar, and rifle. But the spoken message had been too brief to get a fix on the direction of its radio waves. Ramos stiffened. With his phone power turned very low, he said, Frank, lots of people say be cavalier nowadays, but that includes one of the old bunch. The voice might match, too. Uh-huh. Tiflin, the SOB, Nelson growled softly. For ten hours nothing happened. Then there was some tiny radar blips which could have indicated meteors. Nelson and Ramos changed the angle of the ion guides of their ionic motors to move their bubs from course slightly and dodge. During the first hour they were successful, but then there were more blips in greater numbers. Fist-sized chunks flicked through their vehicles almost simultaneously. Air puffed out. The rings collapsed under them. The sealer was no good for holes of such size. At once the continued spin of the bubs wound them, like limp laundry, into knots. While Nelson and Ramos were trying to untangle the mess, visible specks appeared in the distance. They fired at them. Then something slammed hard into the fleshy part of Nelson's hip, penetrating his armor and passing on out again. The sealing gum in the archer's skin worked effectively on the needle-like punctures, but the knockout drug had been delivered. As his awareness faded, Nelson fired rapidly and saw Ramos doing the same, until his hand slapped suddenly at his side. After that there was nothing. Until for a few seconds Frank Nelson regained a blurred consciousness. He was lying unarmored, inside a bub, perhaps his own, which had been patched and re-inflated. All around him was loud laughter and talk, the gurgle of liquor, the smells of cooked meat, a choking concentration of tobacco smoke. Music blared furiously. Bushed out some more, someone was hollering. We got jackpot. The whole fancy works. I almost think I'm back in Sputtsburg, wherever the hell that is. But where's the women? Nothing but dumb, prissy pitchers. Not even good pitchers. There were guys of all sizes, mostly young, some armored, some not. One with a pimply face stumbled near. Frank Nelson choked down his fury at the vandalism. He had a blurred urge to find a certain face, and almost thought he succeeded. But everything, including his head, was a fuzzy jumble. Hey, the pimply guy gurgled. Hey, boss, our benefactors, they're half awake. You should sleep, baby greenhorns. A large man with shovel teeth ambled over. Frank managed half to rise. He met the blow and gave some of it back. Ramos was doing likewise gamely. Then Nelson's head zeroed out again in a pyrotechnic burst. He awoke to almost absolute silence and the turning of the whole universe around him. But of course it was himself that was rotating, boots overhead. There was a bad smell of old sweat and worse. His hip felt numb from the needle puncture. In all, except the most vital areas, those slim missiles would not usually cause death or even serious injury. But soon the wound would ache naggingly. Frank Nelson hardly knew where he was. Then he understood he was drifting free in space in an armor. He thought it was his own until he failed to recognize the scruffed, grimy interior. Even the work shirt he was wearing wasn't the new blue one he had put on. It seemed only hours ago. It was a greasy gray. Etched into the scratched plastic of the helmet that covered his head, he saw Archer III, serial number 828211. And casually, stuck into the gasketed rim of the collar, was a note penciled jaggedly on a scrap of paper. Honest, Greeny, you're a pal. All that nice stuff? Thanks a million. Couple of my boys needed new Archies bad. Thanks again. You and your buddy are not having so bad a break. These old threes have been all over hell. They will show you all about asteroid hopping and mining. So will the load hauling net and tools. Thanks for the little dough, too. Find your space fitness cards in the shirt pocket. We don't need it. Have lots of fun. Just remember me as the stinker. Frank Nelson was quivering with anger and scare. He saw that amended steel net containing a few items had got wrapped round him with his turning. He groped for the ion guide of the ancient shoulder ionic and touched the control. Slowly his spin was checked. Meanwhile he untangled himself and saw what must be Ramos, a drift like himself in a battered Archer III, doing the same. Gradually they managed to ion glide over to each other. Their eyes met. They were the butts of a prank that no doubt had been the source of many guffaws. Did you get a letter to Frank? Ramos asked. For close communication, the old helmet phones still worked okay. I did, Nelson breathed. Why didn't they just knock us off? Alive? We might tell on them. Not slow and funny enough maybe, Ramos answered dolefully. In these broken down outfits we might not live to tell. Besides, even with these notes for clues, who'd ever find out who they are? Way out here. Nelson figured that all this was probably the truth. In the belt, life was cheap, death got to be a joke. There was an ox of a guy with big teeth, he hissed furiously. Thought I saw Tiflin too, the SOB. Cripes, do I always land in this soup? The boss man with the teeth I remember, Ramos graded. Tiflin, I don't know about. Could be. Hell, though, what now? I suppose we're going in about the same direction and at the same speed as before. Have to watch the sun and planets to make sure. Did they leave us any instruments? Meanwhile we might try to decelerate. I'd like to get out to Pluto some time, but not equipped like this. We'll check everything, see how bad off they left us, Nelson said. So that was what they did. After they had set their decrepit shoulder ionics to slow them down in the direction of the belt. Each of their holly nets contained battered chisels, hammers, saws for metal, a radiation counter, a beat-up looking pistol, some old position-finding instruments, including a wristwatch that had seen much better days to be used as a chronometer. There were also two large flasks of water and two-month supply boxes of dehydrated space gruel. These last items obviously granted them from their own now vanished stores. Here was weird generosity, or perhaps just more ghoulish fun to give them the feeble hope of survival. Now they checked each other's archer threes as well as they could while they were being worn. No use to even try to communicate over any distance with the worn-out radio transmitters. The nuclear batteries were 90% used up, which still left considerable time, fortunately, because they had to add battery power to the normally sun- energized shoulder ionics in order to get any reasonable decelerating effect out of them. Out here, unlike on the moon at night, the air restorers could also take direct solar energy through their windows. They needed current only for their pumps. But the green chlorophyne, key to the freshening and reoxygenation of air, was getting slightly pale. The moisture-reclaimers were, by luck, not as bad as some of the other vital parts. Ramos touched his needled side. His wiry grin showed some of his reckless humor. It's not utterly awful yet, he said. How do you feel? Nelson's hip hurt, and he found that he had an awful hangover from the knockout drug and that slapping around he had received. Bad enough, he answered. Maybe if we ate something. They took small sealed packets of dehydrated food in through their chest airlocks, unsleeved their arms, emptied the packets into plastic squeeze bottles from the utensil racks before them, injected water from the pipettes which led to their shoulder tanks, closed the bottles, and let the powdered gruel swell as it reabsorbed moisture. The gruel turned out hot all by itself, for it was a new kind which contained an exothermic ingredient. They ate, in the absence of gravity, by squeezing the bottles. Guests will have to become asteroid hoppers, minors, like the slob said Nelson growled. Well, I did want to try everything. This was to become the pattern of their lives, but not right away. They still had an incomplete conception of the vast distances. They hurled on, certainly decelerating considerably, for days, yet before they were in the belt. Even that looked like enormous emptiness. And the bright speck of palace was too far to one side. Tove Ceres was too near on the other side. Left it would be if they considered the familiar northern hemisphere stars averse as showing up positions. The old instruments had put them off course. Still they had to bear even farther left to match the direction and the average orbital speed, about twelve miles per second, of the belt. Otherwise small pieces of the old planet, hurtling in another direction and or at a different velocity than themselves, could smash them. Maybe they thought that they would be located and picked up. The gang that had robbed and dumped them had found them easily enough, but there again was a paradox of enormity. Bands might wait for suckers somewhere beyond Mars. Elsewhere there could be nobody for millions of miles. End of Chapter 5 Part 1 Chapter 5 Part 2 of The Planet Strapers This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Planet Strapers by Raymond Z. Gollum Chapter 5 Part 2 They saw their first asteroid, a pitted mesoderm fragment of nickel iron from middle deep in the blasted planet. It was just drifting slightly before them, so they had achieved the correct orbital speed. They ion-glided to the chunk and began to search clumsily for worthwhile metal. It was fantastic that somebody had been there before them, chiseling and sawing out a grayish material, of which there was a little left that made the needles of their radiation counters swing wildly. They got a few scraps of the stuff to put in the nets which they were towing. For luck, Ramos laughed. Without it we'll never pay, J. John. Shut up, big deal, Nelson snapped. OK, shut up it is, Ramos answered. So they stayed silent until they couldn't stand that either. Everything was getting on their nerves. Their next asteroids were mere chips a foot long, core fragments of the planet, heavy metals that had sunk deep. No crust material of any normally formed world could ever show such wealth. It gleamed with a pale yellow shine and made Ramos's sunken eyes light up with an ancient fever until he remembered, and until Nelson said. Not for the gold any more, pal, common out here. So it's almost worthless everywhere. Not much use has an industrial metal. But the osmium and uranium alloyed with it are something else. One hunk for each of our nets. Too bad there isn't more. The uranium was driving the radiation counters wild. Could we drag it if there was more, Ramos growled, with just sun power on these lousy shoulder ionics? Everything was going sour, even Ramos. After a long deceleration they were afraid to draw any more power for propulsion from their weakened batteries. They needed the remaining current for the moisture reclaimers and the pumps of the air restorers. A relatively much lighter but vital drain. The sunlight was weak way out here. Worse, the solar thermal couples to power the ionics were almost shot. They tried to fix them, succeeding a little, but using far more time than they had expected. Meanwhile, the changed positions of the various large asteroids, moving in their own individual orbits, lost them any definite idea of where the Cusack's supply post was. And the dizzying distance to Pallas, with only half functioning ionics to get them there, fuddled them in their inexperience. Soon their big hope was that some reasonable asteroid hoppers would come within the few thousand mile range of their weakened transmitters. Then they could call and be picked up. Mostly to keep themselves occupied, they hunted pay metal, taking only the very best that they could find to keep the towage mass down. Right from the start they cut their food ration, a good thing, because one month went and then two, as near as they could figure, cripes, how much longer could they last? Often they actually encouraged their minds to create illusions. Frank would hold his body stiff and look at the stars. After a while he would get the soothing impression that he was swimming on his back in a lake, and was looking up at the night sky. Mostly they were out of the regular radio channels, but sometimes because of the movement of distant bub clusters that must be kept in touch, they heard music and news briefly again. They heard ominous reports from the ever more populous earth. Now it was about areas of ocean to become boundaryed and to be farmed for food. Territorial disputes were now extending far beyond the land. Once more the weapons were being uncovered. Of course there were repercussions out here. Ceres station was beaming pronouncements too, rattling the saber. Nelson and Ramos listened avidly because it was life, because it was contact with lost things, because it was not dead silence. Their own tribulations deepened. Crikes but my feet stink, Ramos once laughed. They must be rotten. They're sore and they itch something awful, and I can't scratch them or change my socks even. The fungus, I guess just old athlete's foot. The stuff is crawling up my legs, Nelson growled. They knew that the Cusacks, maybe two and two, Reynolds, Gimp, Story must be trying to call them. They kept listening in their helmet phones. But this time Frank Nelson knew that he'd gotten himself a real haystack of enormity in which to double for a lost needle. The slender beams could comb it futilely and endlessly in hope of a fortunate accident. Only once they heard, Nelson, raw! The beam swept on. It could have been Joe Cusack's voice, but inevitably somewhere there had to be a giving up point for the searchers. This is where I came in, Nelson said bitterly. Damn these beam systems that are so delicate and important. They did pick up the voices of scattered asteroid hoppers, talking cautiously back and forth to each other far away. Got me pinpointed, Ed. Coming in almost empty this trip, not like the last, staked me to a run into Palestine. Most of such voices sounded regular friendly. Once they heard wild laughter and what could have been a woman's scream. But it could have been other things, too. On another occasion they almost believed that they had their rescue made. Even their worn out direction and distance finders could place the 10 or so voices as originating not much over a hundred miles away. But they checked their trembling enthusiasm just in time. That was the sheerst luck. The curses and the savage frightened snarls were all wrong. If we don't catch us somebody soon, out here the needs could get truly primitive. Oxygen, water, food, repair parts for vital equipment. Cannibalism and blood drinking could also be part of blunt necessity. Nelson and Ramos were fortunate. Twenty miles off was a haze against the stars. A cluster of small mesoderm fragments, drawing power for their shoulder ionics from their almost spent nuclear batteries. They glided toward the cluster and got into its mist, doubling themselves up to look as much like the other chunks as possible. They were like hiding rats for hours, until long after the distant specs moved past. While he waited, Frank Nelson's mind fumbled back to the lost phantom of Jarveston, Minnesota, again. To a man named Jig Hollins, who had got married, stayed home. Yellow, hell. Nelson imagined the comforts he might have had in the Space Force. He coaxed up a dream girl, blonde, dark, redheaded, with an awful wistfulness. He thought of Nance Cottis, the neighborhood kid. He fumbled at the edge of a vast, foggy vision. Where the wonderlust and spacelust of a man, and needs of the expanding race, seemed to blend with his home love and love love, and to become, impossibly, a balanced unit. Later, much later, he heard young, green asteroid hoppers, yakking happily about girls and about how magnificent it was out here. Ha-ha, he heard Ramos Mach. Yeah, Nelson said thickly, lucky for them that they aren't near us, being careless with her beams that way. Frank Nelson sneered, despising these innocent novices, sure that he could have beaten and robbed them without compunction. That far he had come toward understanding the outlaws, the twisted men, of the belt. Ramos and he seemed to go on for an indefinite period longer. In a sense, they toughened. But toward the last, they seemed to blunder slowly in the mind-shadows of their weakening body-forces. They had a little food left, and water from the moisture-reclaimers. At zero gravity, where physical exertion is light, men can get along on small quantities of food. The Swedish starchy liquid that they could suck through a tube from the air-restores. It was a by-product of the photosynthetic process, might even have sustained them for a considerable interval. But the steady weakening of their nuclear batteries was another matter. The pumps of their air-restores and moisture-reclaimers were dependent on current. Gradually, the atmosphere they breathed was getting worse. But from reports they had read and TV-programs they had seen long ago, they found themselves another faint hope and worked on it. With only solar power, derived through worn-out thermal couple units, to feed their uncertain ionics, they could change course only very slowly now. Yet maybe they had used up their bad luck. At last they came to a surface fragment, a couple of a hundred yards long. They climbed over its edge. The thin sunshine hit dried soil, and something like the corn stubble in rows. A head was a stone structure, half flattened. Beside it, a fallen trunk showed its roots. Vegetation was charred black by the absolute dryness of space. There was a fragment of a road, a wall, a hillside. Here there must have been blue sky, thin frosty wind. The small Mars-sized planet had been far from the sun. Yet perhaps the greenhouse effect of a high percentage of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and the radioactive heat of its interior had helped warm it. At least it had been warm enough to evolve life of the highest order, eons ago. Poof had gone the blue sky and this whole world all in a moment, the scattered pieces forming the asteroids. Accident? More likely it was a huge interplanetary missile from competing Mars. The Martians had died too, has surely, though less spectacularly. Radioactive poison perhaps. Here there had been an instant of unimaginable concussion, of a swift passing flame. The drying out was soon ended. Then what was left had been preserved in a vacuum through sixty millions of years. Frank Nielsen had glimpsed ancient Mars preserved on the moon. Now he glimpsed its opponent culture, about which more was generally known. It's real, Ramos grunted. Hoppers find surface fragments like this quite often. Nielsen hardly cared about the archaeological aspects just then. Excitement and hope that became certainty enlivened his dulled brain. An energy source he graded joyfully. The big answer to everything out here, and it's always self-contained in their buildings. They pushed the collapsed and blackened thing with the slender bones aside. They crept into the flat horizontal spaces of the dwelling. Much more like shanks than rooms that humans would inhabit. They shoved away soft, multicolored fabrics spun from glass wool. A metal case with graduated dials and a lens. Bobbles of gold and glinting minerals. In a recess in the masonry, ribboned with glazed copper strips that led to clear globes and curious household appliances, they found what they wanted. Six little oblong boxes bunched together. Their outsides were blue ceramic. Frank Nielsen and Miguel Ramos began to work gingerly, though the gloves of their old archer threes were insulated. Here sixty million years of stop time had made no difference to these nuclear batteries. That, because of the universal character of physical laws, almost had to be similar in principle to their own. They had almost known that it would make no difference. There had been no drain of power through the automatic safety switches. D.C. Kern, huh? Ramos said, breathing hard of the rotten air in his helmet. Yeah, gotta be, Frank answered quickly. Same as from a thermal couple. Voltage about 200. Lots of current, though. Hope these old ionics will take it. We can tap off lower if we have to. Here, I'll fix you first. Grab this end. They had a sweating two hours of rewiring to get done. With power available they might even have found a way to distill and collect the water, usually held in the form of frost, deep buried in the soil of any large surface fragment. They might have broken down some of the water electronically to provide themselves with more oxygen to breathe. But perhaps now such efforts were not necessary. When they switched in the new current, the pumps of their equipment worked better at once. The internal lights of their air restores could be used again, augmenting the action of the pale sunshine on the photosynthetic process of the chlorophane. The air they breathed improved immediately. They tested the power on the shaky ionics and got a good thrust reaction. We can make it, I think, Frank Nelson said, speaking low and quick, with the boldness of an enleavened body and brain. We'll shoot up out of the belt entirely, then move parallel to it backwards, contrary to its orbital flow that is. But, being outside of it, we won't chance getting splattered by any fragments. Probably avoid some slobs, too. We'll decelerate and cut back in near Palace. There will be a way to find the Cusack twins. We're almost chuckled recklessly. Let's not forget to pack these historical objects in our nets, especially that camera, or whatever it is. Money in the bank at last, boy. But after they set out, it wasn't long before they knew that two people were following them. There was no place to hide, and a mocking voice came into their phones. Hey, Nelson, old mechs, wait up. I've been looking for you for over three months. They tried first to ignore the hail. They tried to speed up, but their pursuers still had better propulsion. Nelson gritted his teeth. He felt the certainty of disaster closing in. There's just two of them so far, Ramos hissed. Maybe here's our chance, Frank, to really smear that rat. Ramos's eyes had a battle-light. All right, Tiflin, approach. These guns are lined up and loaded. Ah, is that friendship mechs? The renegade seemed to weedle. But, insolently, he and his larger companion came on. Toss us your pistols, Ramos commanded, as they drifted close, checking speed. Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were missing. Honest mechs, do you expect us to do that? Be cavalier. I haven't even got a pistol right now. Neither has Igor here. Come, look see. Hi, Frankie. Just stay there, Nelson gruffed. Tiflin cocked his head inside the helmet of a brand new archer-six, in a burlesque pose for inspection. He looked bad. His face had turned hard and lean. There were scars on it. The nervous, explosive, tempered kid, who couldn't have survived out here, had been burned out of him. For a second, Nelson almost thought that the change could be for the good. But it was naive to hope that that could happen. Glenn Tiflin had become passive, yielding, mocking, with an air of secret knowledge withheld. What did an attitude like that suggest? treachery, or perhaps worse, a kind of poised and poisonous mental judo? Nelson looked at the other man who wore a tovy armor. Tall, starvation-lean, horse-faced, with a lugubrious, bumpkin-ish smile that almost had a whimsical appeal. Honest, I just picked up Igor, which ain't his real name. In the course of my travels, Tiflin offered lightly. He used to be a comic back in Eurasia. He got bored with life on series, and sort of tumbled away. With his body stiff as a stick, Igor toppled forward, his mouth gapping in dismay. He turned completely over, his great boots kicking awkwardly. His angular elbows flapped like crow wings. He righted himself. Looked astonished, then beautifully self-approving. He burped delicately, patted his chest plate, then sniffed in sad protest at the leveled pistols. Now Nelson and Ramos cast off the loaded nets they had been towing, and closed in on this strange pair. Nelson did the searching while Ramos pointed the guns. Haven't even got my shiv any more, Frankie, Tiflin remarked casually. Threw it at a guy named Fessler, once missed by an inch. Guess it's still going, round and round the sun, for millions of years, longest knife throw there ever was. Fessler frank snapped. Now we're getting places, U.S.O.B. That funny character that robbed and dumped Ramos and me, I'll bet. Probably with your help. You know him, huh? New for a while, past tense, Tiflin chuckled wickedly. Nope, it wasn't me that stripped off his armor in space. He wasn't even around any more when you beauties got caught. They come and they go. But you were around, Tiflin. Maybe not. Maybe I was twenty million miles off. Like hell, Nelson gridded his teeth, grabbed Tiflin's shoulder, and swung his gloved fist as hard as he could against the thin layer of rubber and wire over Tiflin's stomach. He struck three times. Damn you, Nelson snarled. I promised myself I'd get you good, Tiflin. Now tell us what else you and your friends are cooking for us. Or, by the big silence, you'll be a drifting, explosively decompressed mummy. Frank Nelson didn't know till now, after exerting himself, how weak privations had made him. He felt dizzy. Tiflin's eyes had glazed slightly as he and Frank did a slow roll together. He gasped. But that insulting smirk came back. Haven't had your weedies lately, have you, Frank? Go ahead, hit, knock yourself out. You too, Mechs. I've been slugged before, by big men, in shape. Could be I'm not cooking anything. Except I notice that you two have found yourselves some very interesting local objects of ancient history, worth a little money. Also, some good, raw metal. Well, I suppose you want to get the load and yourselves to the famous twins, Art and Joe. That's easy, with luck. Though the region is a trifle disturbed, right now, but I can tell you where they are. You won't have to fiddle around, hunting. Here, hold these guns, Frank. Let me have a couple pokes at that slob, Ramos snapped. All right, all right. Who's asking you guys to believe me, Tiflin, cut in? I'll beam the twins for you. Since I guess your transmitters won't reach. You can listen in and talk back through my set, OK? Let's see what happens. Just for kicks, Ramos said softly. If you're calling some friends to come and get us or anything, Tif, well, you've had it. They watched Tiflin spin and focus the antenna. Cousac, cousac, cousac, cousac, he said into his phone. Missing boys alive and coming to you. Mechs, an old guess witch. Kicking and independent, but very hungry, I think. Put on the coffee pot, you storekeepers. Cousac, cousac, cousac. Talk up, Frank and Miguel. Your voices will relay through my phone. Hi, Art and Joe, it's us. Ramos almost apologized. Yeah, we don't quite know yet what Tiflin is pulling. But here we are, if it's you we're talking to. There was the usual long wait as impulses bridged the light minutes. Then Art Cousac's voice snarled, guardedly. I hear you ram and knell. Come in, if you can. Tif, you garbage, some day. This is all. This is all. The message broke off. Tiflin smirked. Third quadrant of the belt, he said. Given a position in space almost like latitude and longitude on earth. About twenty minutes of the thirty-first degree. Three degrees above medium orbital plane. Approximately two hundred hours from here. Can Igor and I leave you now, or do you want us to escort you in? We'll escort you, Ramos said. So it was until near the end of a long ride a cluster of bubs was in view in the near distance, and Ramos and Nelson could contact Art Cousac themselves. We've got Tiflin and his Tovey Powell with us, Art, Frank Nelson said. They showed us the way, more or less, because we made them. But Tif did give us the right position at the start. A favor maybe, I don't know. And now he's saying, be cavalier, it might be awkward for me to meet Art and Joe just at the present. Do you want to fix this character's wagon bad enough? Your customers could get mean, if he ever did them dirt. Just one thing I've got against Tiflin, Art snarled back. Every time I hear his voice it means trouble. But I've never seen the crumb face to face since the moon hop. Okay, let's not spoil my stomach. Turn him loose. It can't make much difference, or maybe I'm sentimental about the old bunch. He was our cracked space wild punk. Thanks, Art, Tiflin laughed. In a minute he and his comic Scarecrow Powell, who originated from the dark side of trouble on Earth and out here too, were fading against the stars. Nelson and Ramos, the long lost, glided in past some grim hoppers. Abub and sweet air were around them once more. They shed their stinking archer threes, hot showers, miraculous luxury, played over them. They rubbed disinfected salves into their fungus-ridden hides. Then there was a clean white table with plates, knives, forks. They had to treat their shrunken stomachs gently. Just a little of everything. Beer, steak, vegetables, fruit. Somewhere during the past unmarked days, Frank Nelson had gotten to be twenty years old. Only twenty. Well, maybe this was his celebration. Ramos and he told their story very briefly. Little time was wasted on congratulations for survival, or talk of lost as long past. The Cusacks looked leaner and tougher now, and there were plenty of present difficulties to worry them. Joe Cusack hurried out to argue with the miners at the raw metal receiving bends, and at the store-bubs. Art stayed to explain the present situation. Three big loads of supplies were shipped through to us from the moon he growled. We did fine trading for metal. We sent J. John Reynolds his percentage, a fair fraction of his entire loan. We sent old Paul five thousand dollars. But the fourth and fifth loads of trade stuff got pirated en route. When there's trouble on earth it comes out here, too. Ceres, colonized by our socialist Tovey Friends of Northern Eurasia, helps stir up the bums, who think up plenty of hell on their own. It's a force-out attempt aimed at us or at anybody who thinks our way. After two lost shipments and a lot of new installations here at the post, we're about broke again. Worse, we've got the asteroid hoppers expecting us to come through with pay for the new metal in their nets, and with stuff they need. Back home some people used to race hell about a trifle like a delayed letter. How about a spaceman's reaction, when what is delayed may be something to keep him alive. They could really get annoyed and kick this place apart. Art Cusack blew air up past his pug nose and continued. Finance, here we go again, Frank, he chuckled. Gimp Hinds is helping us. After Mars, he came here without trouble. He's in Palestine now, trying to raise some fast cash, and to rush supplies through from there, under Space Force Guard. You know he's got a head for commerce, as well as science. But our post here perhaps isn't considered secure enough to back alone any more. Art grinned wirely at Nelson and Ramos. His hint was plain. He had seen the museum pieces that they had brought in. Should we, Frank? Ramos chuckled after a moment. Possibly. We've got some collateral art. Lots more valuable per unit mass than any raw metal, I should think. So you might want to work for us, art inquired blandly. Not for, Nelson chuckled. We might say with. OK, cuties, art laughed. Joe Cusack had just come back into the dwelling, an office-bub. Don't let my twin sell you any rotten apples, fellas, he warned lightly. He might be expecting you to transport your collateral to Palestine. Naturally, anybody trying to strangle this post will be blocking the route. You might get robbed again. Also, murdered. Ramos's gaunt face still had its daring grin. Frank and I know that, he said. I'm past bragging. But we've had experience. Now we might be smart enough to get through. A few more days out there won't hurt. How about it, Frank? Ten hours sleep and breakfast, Frank said. Then a little camouflaged material, new weapons, a pair of archers in condition, got any left? Five in stock, Joe answered. Settled then, Art asked. Here it is, Ramos answered, and Nelson nodded. It would have been rough going for them to try to sleep in beds. They had lost the habit. They slept inside their new archer fives. Afterwards they painted their armor a dark gray, like chunks of Mesoderm stone. They did likewise to the two bundles in which they wrapped their relics. They were as careful as possible to get away from the post without being observed, visually or by radar. But of course, you could never be sure. Huddled up to resemble stray fragments, they curved out of the belt toward the pole star, north of its orbital plane. Moving in a parallel course, they proceeded towards Palestine. The only thing that would seem odd was that they were moving contrary to the general orbital rotation of most of the permanent bodies of the solar system. Of course, they and their bundles might have been stray meteors from deep in space. Four watchful armored figures seemed to notice the peculiarity of their direction and to become suspicious. These figures seemed too wary for honesty as they approached. They got within twenty-five miles. Even without the memory that Tiflan might make guesses about what they meant to do, Nelson and Ramos would have taken no chances. They had to be brutal. Homing darts pierced armor. The four went to sleep. End of chapter five, part two. Chapter six, part one of the planet strappers. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The planet strappers by Raymond Z. Gallin. Chapter six, part one. The asteroid palace was a chunk of rich core material, two hundred some miles in its greatest dimension. It had a mottled pinkish shine, partly from untarnished lead, osmium, considerable uranium, some iron, nickel, silver, copper. The metals were alloyed here, almost pure there. There was even a little rock, but thirty-five percent of palace's roughly spherical mass was said to be gold. Gold is not rare at the cores of the worlds, to which most of the heavy elements must inevitably sink during the molten stage of planetary developments. On earth it must be the same, though who could dig through three thousand miles into a zone of such heat and pressure. But the asteroid world had exploded. Palace was an exposed and cooled piece of its heart. Palace had a day of twenty-four hours because men, working with great ion jets angling towards the stars, had adjusted its natural rate of rotation for their own convenience to match the terrestrial. A greater change was Palestine. Frank Nelson and Miguel Ramos made the considerable journey to it without further incident. Because he was tense with hurry, Nelson's impressions were superficial. Something like serene but bigger and more fantastic. A man weighed only a few ounces here. Spidery guidance towers could loom impossibly high. There were great storage bins for raw metals brought in from all over the belt. There were rows of water tanks, as on the moon the water came mostly from gypsum rock or occasionally from soil frost, both found on nearby crustal asteroids. Beyond the refineries bulged the domes of the city itself. Housing factories, gardens, recreation centers, and sections that got considerably lost and divergent, trying to imitate the apartment house areas of earth. Frank Nelson's wonder was hurried and dulled. Gimp hines and David Lester were waiting inside the stelline reception dome when Nelson and Ramos landed lightly at the port on their own feet, with no more breaking assistance than their own shoulder ionics. Greetings were curiously breathless yet casual, but without any back slapping. We'd about given you two up, Gimp said. But an hour ago Joe Cusack beamed me and said you'd be along with some museum stuff. Les lives here now, working with the new archaeological institute. Hi, good to see you guys, Ramos said. Likewise, hello Les, Frank put in. While Frank was gripping David Lester's limp, diffident hand, which seemed almost to apologize for his having come so far from home, Gimp teased a little. So you latched on to Art Cusack too, or was it the other way around? Frank's smile was lopsided. I didn't analyze motives. Art's a pretty good guy. I suppose we just wanted to help Joe and him out. Or maybe it was instinct. Anyhow, what's wrong with latching on to, or being latched on to, by somebody who you feel will get himself and you ahead and make you both a buck. Check, not a darn thing, Gimp laughed. Now let's go to my hotel and have a look at what you brought in. Did you really examine it yet? Some on the way, not very much, Ramos said. There's a camera. In the privacy of Gimp's quarters, the bundles were opened, the contents some of them dried and gruesome, all of them rather wonderful, were exposed. David Lester and Gimp Hines were both quietly avid. Lester knew the most about these things, but Gimp's hands, on the strange camera, were more skillful. The cautious scrutiny of dials and controls, marked with cryptic numerals and symbols, and the probing of detailed parts and their functions, took about an hour. What do you think, Les? Gimp asked. I'm not an expert yet, Lester answered, but as far as I know this is the first undamaged camera that has yet been found. That makes it unique. Of course by now, hoppers are bringing in quite a lot of artifacts from surface asteroids. But there's not much in the way of new principle for our camera manufacturers to buy. Lens systems, shutters, shock mountings, self-developing, integral viewing, projecting, and sonic features all turn out to be similar to ours. It's usually that way with other devices too. It's as if all their history and ours were parallel. Well, damn it, let's see what the thing can show, Ramos gruffed. In the darkened room, the device threw a rectangle of light on the wall. Then there was shape, motion, and color, kept crystallized from sixty million years before. A cloud, pinked by sunrise, floating high in a thin, expanded atmosphere, did clouds everywhere in the universe always look much the same? Wolfish, glinting darts, vanishing away. Then a mountainside covered with spiny growths that from a distance seemed half cactus and half pine. A road, a field, a dull, huge cylinder pointing upwards. Shapes of soft, bluish gray, topped like rounded roofs, unfolding out of a chink, and swaying off in a kind of run, with little clinkings of equipment, for there were sounds too. Two eye-like organs projecting upward, the pupils clear and watchful, a tendril with a ridged, dark hide waving what might have been a large blue flower, which was attached to the end of a metal tube by means of a bit of fiber tied in a granny knot, a sunburst of white fire in the distance. It could have gone on perhaps for many hours, reality with every detail sharp, parallels with earthly life, maybe even sentiment was there, if you only knew how it was shown. But in the differences you got lost, as if in a vivid dream that you couldn't fully understand. Though what was pictured here was certainly from the last beautiful days of a competing planet. Frank Nielsen's mouth often hung open with fascination, but his own realities kept intruding. They prodded him. I hate to break this off, he said, but a lot of asteroid hoppers are out at the post waiting for Ramos and me to bring stuff back. It's a long ride through a troubled region. There's plenty to get arranged beforehand, so first what do we do to realize some quick funds out of these relics? Heinz terminated the pictured sequence. Frank Ramos. I'll keep this camera, he said, urgently. It's a little bit special, at least. History is here to be investigated. Offers, bids could come up. OK, I'm talking about Doe again. Still, who wants to detach himself right away from something pretty marvelous by selling it? I'll dump most of the other things. Getting alone? The hawk shop approach is no good. Am I telling it right, Les? Lester nodded. More of the same will be brought in. Prices will drop. Archeological Survey has a buying service for museums back home. I've been working for them for a month. I don't claim to love them entirely, but they'll give you the safest break. You should get enough for your purposes without the camera. With a load like this, you can see Doc Linford, the boss, at any time. Right now, then, Frank said. Hey, you impolite slobs. Ramos laughed. When do you consult me, co-discoverer and owner? All right, skip it. You're the Wizard of Oz. I'll just grab a few items for my ma and the kids, and maybe a girl or two. I'll meet someplace. You guys might as well do the same. He took some squares of fabric, silk and soft, though spun from fibers of colored glass, and some wheeled devices, which might have been toys. Lester and Heinz picked up only token pieces of the fabric. Frank took a three-inch golden ring that glinted with mineral. Except that it looked decorative, he had no idea of its original purpose. The broken, fine-boned mummy and the other items were appraised and bought in a large room across the city. It was already cluttered with queer fossils and objects. The numbers printed on the two equal checks and on the cash in their hands still looked slightly mythical to Nelson and Ramos, to whom a thousand dollars had seemed the fortune. Later, at the U.S.S.F. headquarters, he was prepared to argue grimly. Words were in his mind. A vital matter of supply. Without an escort, we still have to try to get through alone. You have been informed, therefore. If anything happens, you will be responsible. He didn't have to say anything like this. They knew. Maybe an old bitterness had made him misjudge the U.S.S.F. A young colonel smiled, tiredly. This has been happening, he said. We have limited facilities for this purpose. The U.S.S.F. even less. However, an escort is due in now. We can move out again with you in seven hours. Thank you, sir, Nelson responded. Gimp Hines had the better part of the supplies to be purchased already lined up at the warehouses. Nelson counted the money he had left. Figuring losses and gains, I have no idea how much I owe Jay John, if anything, he laughed. So I'll make it a grand, build up my ego. But we owe old Paul more than dough. All right, I'm another idiot. I'll mail Jay John a similar draft, Ramos gruffed. Paul's a problem. He can use money, but he never lived for it. And you can't buy a friend. We'll have to rig something. Yeah, we will, Gimp said. A couple of times I forgot Jay John, but I lost my shirt on those loads that were lifted off you boneheads. The Cusacks reimbursed me for half. Do you two want to cover the other half? I'll forget it. Who's got time to figure all this? That old coot doped himself out a nice cash-dollar scheme, making us promise. Or was it a leg-pull on a highly elusive proposition, where big sums and the vastness of space seem to match? Hell, I'm getting mixed up again. David Lester had wondered off embarrassly, there in the warehouse, but now he returned, clearing his throat for attention. Fell as he said, Helen and I want you to come out to our apartment now for dinner. Shucks, that's swell, lest Ramos responded, suddenly curious. Here also Nelson enthused. Sure, Gimp said, but his smile thinned. In this gravity, going to Lester's place was a floating glide rather than a walk, along a covered causeway, into a huge dome. Up a wall with hand-holds, onto a wispy balcony, Nelson and Ramos brought liquor and roses. Much of what followed was painful and familiar, in a fantastic setting. Two young people recently married, struggling with problems that they hadn't been able to plan for very well. While his wife was out of earshot, Lester put his hand on the back of a chair constructed entirely of fine golden wire. Later it developed that he had made it, do it yourself fashion, to be economical, and seemed more intent on holding it down than to rest his hand. Gimp, Frank, he began nervously. You help Helen and me get married and get set up out here. The Archaeological Institute paid our way to Palestine, but there were other expenses. Her, my father-in-law, died by his own hand while still awaiting trial. Everything he owned is still tied up. Now, well, you know human biology. I hope you can wait a little longer for us to begin paying back your loan. Nelson had a vagrant thought about how money now had to stand on its own commercial value, rather than rely on the ancient witchcraft of a gold standard. Then he almost suspected that Lester was being devious and clever. But he knew the guy too well. Cripes lest he burst out almost angrily. How about your services? Just now as an archaeological consultant. If you won't consider that we might have meant to make you a gift, pretty soon you'll have us completely confused. What a topic for an evening of fun, Gimp complained. Hey Helen, can I mix the drinks? Yes, of course, Mr. Hines. I'll get you the things, she said, with an apology in her eye and voice, as if fussy celebrities had descended on her small, unsettled and poor household. On the moon you were a swell cook, Helen, Frank reminded her. She flashed a small smile. It was different there. Things weighed something and stayed in place. Here, just breathe hard and you have a kitchen accident. Besides, I had a garden. We'd like one here, but there's no room, and in the market. Shucks it's new here to us too, Ramos soothed. Right in an archer in space, 0G is different from this. Things were a bit less strained after that, through the skimpy meal, with its special devices, unique to the asteroid, and their tiny gravity. Clamps to fasten plates to tables and vitals to plates, drinking vessels that were half squeeze bottles. Such equipment was now available in what might have once been called a dime store, but with another price level. The visitors made a game of being awkward and inept together. It was balm for Helen's sensitivity. Somebody's got to keep the camera for us, Mex, Frank Nelson said presently. Yeah, I know. Less'll do it for us, Ramos answered. He's the best there. He can run through all the pictures, make copies with an ordinary camera, see if he can market them. 20% ought to be about right for his cut. Lester tried to interrupt, but Frank got ahead of him. We owe Gimp for those loads we lost. Got to cut him into this as a consultant. You'll be around Palestine for a while, helping out with this end of the twins enterprise, won't you, Gimp? Hines grinned. Probably. Glad you slobs got memories. Glad to be of assistance any time. Less is no louse. He'll help, old friends. I'll bring him the camera, out of the safe at my hotel, as soon as we leave here. Lester smiled doubtfully, then happily. This was how they worked the fabulous generosity of spacemen in the chips on him. Nelson, Ramos and Hines escaped soon after that. Three hours left. I guess you guys want to get lost separately, Gimp chuckled. I'll say so long at the launching catapults. Later. I've got some tough guards fresh from the moon who will go along with you. Art and Joe need them. Frank Nelson wandered alone in the recreation area. He heard music, fire streak, queen of serene. He searched faces looking for an ugly one with shovel teeth. He thought with achy wistfulness of a small hero worshipping girl named Jenny Harper at Serene. He found no one he had ever seen before. In a joint he watched a girl with almost no clothes do an incredible number of spinning somersaults in midair. He thought he ought to find himself a friend, then decided perversely to hell with it. He thought of the trouble on earth on series of Tiflin and Igor, of Fanshawe, the latest leader of the asteroid belt tufts, the Jolly Lads, that you heard about. He thought about how terribly vulnerable to attack Palestine seemed, even with its encirclement of outriding guard stations. He thought of Paul Hendricks, two and two Baines, Charlie Reynolds, Otto Kramer, Mitch Story, and Miss Rosalie Parks, who was his old Latin teacher. He thought of trying to beam some of them, but hell they all seemed so long lost and he wasn't in the mood now. He even thought about how it was trying to give yourself a dry shave with a worn out razor inside an archer. He thought that sometime, surely, perhaps soon, the big vacuum would finish him. He wound up with a simple sentimental impulse full of nostalgia and tenderness for things that seemed to stay steady and put. The way he felt was half-hearted apology for human moods in which murder would have been easy. He even had a strange envy for David Lester. Into the synthetic celluloist lining of a small carton bought at a souvenir shop, he placed the sixty million-year-old golden band with its odd aboresques and its glinting chips of mineral. Regardless of its mysterious, intentional function, it could be a bracelet. To him, just then, it was only a trinket that he had picked up. Before he wrapped and addressed the package, he put a note inside. Hi, Nance Cottes, thinking about you and all the neighbors. This might reach you by Christmas. Remember me? Frank Nelson. Postage was two hundred dollars, which seemed a trifle, and he didn't quite realize how like a king's ransom a gift like this would seem in Jarveston, Minnesota. On leaving the post office, he promptly forgot the whole matter, as hard, practical concerns took hold of him again. At the loading-quays, special catapults hurled the gigantic bales of supplies clear of palace. To the Cusacks, this shipment would now have seemed small, but it was much larger than the loads Ramos and Nelson had handled before. Gimp and Lester saw them off. Then they were in space, with extra ionics pushing the bales. The guard of six new men was posted. Nelson wasn't sure they'd be any good or whether he could trust them all, but they looked eagerly alert. Riding a mile off was the Space Force patrol bub. All through the long journey, beam calls ahead were avoided for added safety. Nelson kept wondering if he'd find the post in ruins with what was left of Art and Joe drifting and drying. But nothing like that happened yet, and the shipment was brought through. Business with the asteroid hoppers was started at once. When there was a lull, Art Cusack talked expansively in his office bub. Good work, Frank. Same to you, Ramos. Except that I know you're itching with your own ideas and probably won't be around long. Which is your affair. Never mind what anybody says about Venus or any other place. The belt with its history, its metals, and its possibilities is the best part of the solar system. Keep your defenses up, your line of communication covered, and you can't help but make money. There are new posts to set up. Help to recruit and bring out. Steline plants and other factories to construct. There'll be garden bubs, repair shops, everything. Time, work, and a little luck will do it. You listening, Frank? Nelson got a bit cagey with Art again. Okay, Art. You seem like a formal fella. Mex and I joined up and helped out pretty much as informal company members. But as long as we've put in our dough, let's make it official in writing and signed. The K-R-N-H enterprises. Cusack, Ramos, Nelson, and Heinz. The H could also stand for Hendricks, Paul Hendricks. I like it that way, you suspicious slob, Art Cusack chuckled. So another phase began for Nelson. Offices bored him. Amassing money per se meant little to him, except has a success symbol that came out of the life he had known. He figured that a man ought to be a success, even a rough and tumble romantic like Ramos or Joe Cusack, or himself, with both distance and home ingrained confusingly into his nature. One thing that Nelson was, was conscientious. He could choose and stick to a purpose for even longer than it seemed right for him. Mostly now, during the long grind of expansion, he was afield. Disturbances on earth quieted it for a while, as had always happened so far. The belt responded with relative peace. Tovi Circes, the big asteroid, which, like the others, should have been open to all nations, but wasn't, kept mostly to its own affairs. There were only the constant dangers, natural human, and a combination. There was always a job, a convoy to meet, a load of supplies to rush to a distant point. Jolly lads to scare off. Reckless Ramos might be with Nelson or Joe Cusack, who usually operate it separately, or a few guards or several asteroid hoppers, most of whom were tough and steady and good friends to know. Often enough, Nelson was alone. At first, K.R.N.H. just handled the usual supplies. But when factory and hydroponic equipment began to arrive, Joe Cusack and Frank Nelson might be out establishing a new post. There'd be green help, bubbing out from the moon to break in. Nelson would see new faces that still seemed familiar, because they were like those of the old bunch, as it had been. Grimm scared young men full of wonder, but the thin stream of the adventurous was thickening, as more opportunities opened. Occasionally there was a young couple. Oh, no you thought. Then, well, maybe. That is, if somebody didn't crack up, or get lymph node swellings that wouldn't reduce, and if you didn't have to try to play nursemaid. Now and then Nelson was in Palestine for business, for relief, for a bit of hell-raising, to see Gimp and the David Lester's. Pretty soon there was an air in the Lester household. Red, healthy and male. Cripes out here too. Okay, Josh the parents along. The most wonderful boy in the solar system. Otherwise, matters there were much better than before. The camera was in a museum in Washington. The pictures it had contained were on TV back home. Just another anti-war film, maybe. But impressive and different. The earnings didn't change. Nelson's life much, nor Gimp's nor Ramos's. But it sure helped the Lester's. End of Chapter 6, Part 1