The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun

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Title: The Planet Strappers

Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun

Release Date: April 13, 2008 [EBook #25067]

Language: English

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Transcriber's Note:
      Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
      the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
      Text enclosed by asterisks was in bold face in the
      original (*bold*). The 3-dot ellipsis has been retained
      as in the original.


Out There--the world's first space colony--adventures and dangers beyond
human ken!




The Planet Strappers


RAYMOND Z. GALLUN




*A Million Miles Beyond the Moon...*

... Nelson and Ramos sped on toward Mars in their tiny plastic-bubble
spacecraft. They were on the alert--it didn't pay to take anything for
granted in the Big Vacuum....

The way between the worlds was mostly empty space--except for the
outlaws of the void who drifted, patiently and vengefully waiting for a
victim, then struck!

Nelsen and Ramos tensed--blips on the radar screen! Maybe meteors...
More blips--and fist-sized chunks of rock flicked through their fragile
vehicles. Air puffed out ... and Nelson and Ramos were fighting for
their lives...

*... A Million Miles Beyond the Moon!*




THE PLANET STRAPPERS


Raymond Z. Gallun


PYRAMID BOOKS, 444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York




*THE PLANET STRAPPERS,*
_by Raymond Z. Gallun_


This book is fiction. No resemblance is intended between any character
herein and any person (Here or Out There), living or dead; any such
resemblance is purely coincidental.


Published by Pyramid Books
First printing: _October 1961_


_Printed in the United States of America_




I


The Archer Five came in a big packing box, bound with steel ribbons and
marked, _This end up--handle with care_. It was delivered at a
subsidized government surplus price of fifty dollars to Hendricks'
Sports and Hobbies Center, a store in Jarviston, Minnesota, that used to
deal mostly in skin diving equipment, model plane kits, parts for
souping up old cars, and the like. The Archer Five was a bit obsolete
for the elegant U.S. Space Force boys--hence the fantastic drop in price
from two thousand dollars since only last June. It was still a
plenty-good piece of equipment, however; and the cost change was a real
break for the Bunch.

By 4:30 that bright October afternoon, those members who were attending
regular astronautics classes at Jarviston Technical College had gathered
at Hendricks' store. Ramos and Tiflin, two wild characters with
seldom-cut hair and pipe stem pants, who didn't look as if they could be
trusted with a delicate unpacking operation, broke the Archer out with a
care born of love, there in Paul Hendricks' big backroom shop, while the
more stolid members--and old Paul, silent in his swivel chair--watched
like hawks.

"So who tries it on first?" Ramos challenged. "Dumb question. You,
Eileen--naturally."

Most Bunches have a small, hard, ponytailed member, dungareed like the
rest.

Still kidding around, Ramos dropped an arm across Eileen Sands'
shoulders, and got her sharp elbow jabbed with vigor into his stomach.

She glanced back in a feminine way at Frank Nelsen, a tall, lean guy of
nineteen, butch-haircutted and snub featured. But he was the purposeful,
studious kind, more an observer and a personal doer than a leader; he
hadn't much time for the encouraging smiles of girls, and donning even
an Archer Five now instead of within a few hours, didn't exactly
represent his kind of hurry.

"I'll wait, Eileen," he said. Then he nodded toward Gimp Hines. That the
others would also pick Gimp was evident at once. There were bravos and
clapping, half for a joke.

"Think I won't?" Gimp growled, tossing his crutches on a workbench
littered with scraps of color-coded wire, and hopping forward on the one
leg that had grown to normal size. He sort of swaggered, Frank Nelsen
noticed. Maybe the whole Bunch swaggered with him in a way, because,
right now, he represented all of them in their difficult aim. Gimp
Hines, with the nylon patch in his congenitally imperfect heart, and
with that useless right underpinning, had less chance of taking part in
space-development than any of them--even with all his talent for
mechanics and electronics.

Two-and-Two (George) Baines, a large, mild person who was an expert
bricklayer in his spare time, while he struggled to absorb the intricate
math that spacemen are supposed to know--he used to protest that he
could at least add two and two--bounced forward, saying, "I'll give yuh
a hand, Gimp."

Mitch Storey, the lean colored kid with the passion for all plant life,
and the specific urge to get somehow out to Mars, was also moving to
help Gimp into the Archer. Gimp waved them off angrily, but they valeted
for him, anyhow.

"Shucks, Gimp," Storey soothed. "Anybody needs assistance--the first
time..."

They got his good leg, and what there was of the other, into the boots.
They laced carefully, following all they had learned from books. They
rolled the wire-braced silicone rubber body-section up over his torso,
guided his arms into the sleeves, closed the zipper-sealers and centered
the chest plate. While the others checked with their eyes, they
inspected the nipples of the moisture-reclaimer and chlorophane
air-restorer capsules. They lifted the helmet of clear, darkened plastic
over his head, and dogged it to the gasket with the automatic
turnbuckles. By then, Gimp Hines' own quick fingers, in the gloves, were
busy snapping this and adjusting that. There was a sleepy hum of
aerating machinery.

"It even _smells_ right, in here," Gimp growled muffledly, trying to be
nonchalant.

There was loud laughter and clapping. Ramos whistled piercingly, with
two fingers. The huge Kuzak twins, Art and Joe--both had football
scholarships at Tech--gave Indian yells. Eileen Sands clasped her hands
over her head and went up on her toes like the ballet dancer she had
once meant to be. Old Paul, in his chair, chortled, and slapped his arm.
Even little David Lester said "Bravo!" after he had gulped. The applause
wasn't entirely facetious.

Gimp's whole self had borrowed hard lines and an air of competence from
the Archer Five. For a second he looked like somebody who could really
cross millions of miles. There was a tiny, solar-powered
ionic-propulsion unit mounted on the shoulders of the armor, between
the water-tank and the beam-type radio transmitter and receiver. A
miniaturized radar sprouted on the left elbow joint. On the inside of
the Archer's chest plate, reachable merely by drawing an arm out of a
sleeve, emergency ration containers were racked. In the same place was a
small airlock for jettisoning purposes and for taking in more supplies.

"What do yuh know--toilet facilities, yet!" Ramos chirped with spurious
naivete, and there were guffaws which soon died out. After all, this
_was_ a serious occasion, and who wanted to be a jerk? Now that the
price had been shoved down into the ground, they could probably get
their Archer Fives--their all-important vacuum armor. They were one more
hurdle nearer to the stars.

Two regular members of the Bunch hadn't yet shown up. Ten were present,
including Gimp in the Archie. All were different. Each had a name.

But Frank Nelsen figured that numbers, names, and individual variations
didn't count for much, just then. They were a crowd with an overall
personality--often noisy, sometimes quiet like now, always a bit grim to
sustain their nerve before all they had to learn in order to reduce
their inexperienced greenness, and before the thought of all the
expensive equipment they had to somehow acquire, if they were to take
part in the rapid adaptation of the solar system to human uses. Most of
all, their courage was needed against fear of a region that could be
deadly dangerous, but that to them seemed wonderful like nothing else.

The shop smelled of paint, solvent and plastic, like most any other.
Gimp, sitting in the Archer, beside the oil-burning stove, didn't say
any more. He forgot to play tough, and seemed to lose himself in a
mind-trip Out There--probably as far as he would ever get. His face,
inside the helmet, now looked pinched. His freckles were very plain in
his paled cheeks. Gimp was awed.

So was everybody else, including Paul Hendricks, owner of the Hobby
Center, who was approaching eighty and was out of the running, though
his watery blue eyes were still showing the shine of boyhood, right now.

Way back, Paul Hendricks used to barnstorm county fairs in a
wood-and-fabric biplane, giving thrill rides to sports and their girls
at five dollars a couple, because he had been born sixty years too soon.

Much later in his spotty career, he had started the store. He had also
meant to do general repair work in the backroom shop. But in recent
years it had degenerated into an impromptu club hall, funk hole,
griping-arguing-and-planning pit, extracurricular study lab and project
site for an indefinite horde of interplanetary enthusiasts who were
thought of in Jarviston as either young adults of the most resourceful
kind--for whom the country should do much more in order to insure its
future in space--or as just another crowd of delinquents, more bent on
suicide and trouble-making than any hot rod group had ever been. Paul
Hendricks was either a fine, helpful citizen--among so many who were
disinterested and preoccupied--or a corrupting Socrates who deserved to
drink hemlock.

Frank Nelsen knew all this as well as most. He had been acquainted with
Paul ever since, at the age of seven, he had come into the store and had
tried to make a down payment on a model building kit for a Y-71
ground-to-orbit freight rocket--clearly marked $49.95 in the display
window--with his fortune of a single dime. Frank had never acquired a
Y-71 kit, but he had found a friend in Paul Hendricks, and a place to
hang around and learn things he wanted to know. Later on, as now, he had
worked in the store whenever he had some free time.

Frank leaned against a lathe, watching the others, the frosty thrill and
soul-searching hidden inside himself. Maybe it was hard to guess what
Eileen Sands, standing near, was thinking, but she was the firm kind who
would have a definite direction. Perhaps unconsciously, she hummed a
tune under her breath, while her feet toyed with graceful steps. No
doubt, her mind was also on the Big Vacuum beyond the Earth.

But what is there about a dangerous dream? When it is far out of reach,
it has a safe, romantic appeal. Bring its fulfillment a little closer,
and its harsh aspects begin to show. You get a kick out of that, but you
begin to wonder nervously if you have the guts, the stamina, the
resistance to loneliness and complete strangeness.

Looking at a real Archie--with a friend inside it, even--did this to
Frank Nelsen. But he could see similar reactions in some of the others.

Mitch Storey sat, bent forward, on a box, staring at his big, sepia
hands, in which he tossed back and forth a tiny, clear capsule
containing a fuzzy fragment of vegetation from Mars. He had bought this
sealed curio from Paul a year ago for fifty dollars--souvenirs that came
from so far were expensive. And now, in view of what was happening to
hopeful colonists of that once inhabited and still most Earth-like other
planet, ownership of such a capsule on Earth seemed about to be banned,
not only by departments of agriculture, but by bodies directly concerned
with public safety.

Did the color photographs of Mars, among all the others that the Bunch
had thumbtacked to the shop walls, still appeal as strongly to Mitch?
Did he still want to go out to that world of queer, swirled markings,
like the fluid flow in the dregs of a paper coffee cup? Mitch
would--more so than ever. He had plant life in his soul, maybe from
wandering in the swamps near his home in Mississippi. He had been
supporting himself here at school by fixing gardens. If it was plant
life of a different, dangerous sort, with other billions of years of
development behind it, that just made the call stronger. Mitch just sat
and thought, now, the mouth organ he seldom played sagging forward in
his frayed shirt pocket.

Ramos--Miguel Ramos Alvarez--only stood with his black-visored cap
pushed back on his head, and a cocky smirk of good humor on his mouth.
Reckless Ramos, who went tearing around the country in an ancient motor
scooter, decorated with squirrel tails and gaudy bosses, would hardly be
disturbed by any risky thing he wanted to do. The thumbtacked pictures
of the systems of far, cold Jupiter and Saturn--Saturn still
unapproached, except by small, instrumented rockets--would be the things
to appeal to him.

The Kuzak twins stood alertly, as if an extra special homecoming
football game was in prospect. But they weren't given to real doubts,
either. From their previous remarks it was clear that the asteroids,
those fragments of an exploded and once populated world, orbiting out
beyond Mars, would be for them. Osmium, iridium, uranium. The rich,
metallic guts of a planet exposed for easy mining. Thousands of
prospectors, hopeful characters, and men brutalized by the life in
space, were already drifting around in the Asteroid Belt.

Two-and-Two Baines wore a worried, perplexed expression. He was a
massive, rather lost young man who had to keep up with the times, and
with his companions, and was certainly wondering if he was able.

Little David Lester, the pedant, the mother's boy, who looked eighteen
but was probably older, pouted, and his heavy lips in his thin face
moved. "Cores," Nelsen heard him whisper. He had the habit of talking to
himself. Frank knew his interests. Drill cores withdrawn from the strata
of another planet, and inspected for fossils and other evidences of its
long history, was what he probably meant. Seeing Gimp in the Archie had
set off another scientific reverie in his head. He was a whizz in any
book subject. Maybe he had the brains to be a great investigator of the
past, in the Belt or on Mars, if his mind didn't crack first, which
seemed sure to happen if he left Earth at all.

But it was Glen Tiflin's reactions that were the strangest. He had his
switch blade out, and was tossing it expertly against a wall
two-by-four, in which it stuck quivering each time. This seemed his one
skill, his pride, his proof of manhood. And he wanted to get into space
like nobody else around, except maybe Gimp Hines. It wasn't hard to
sense how his head worked--the whole Bunch knew.

Tiflin's face seemed to writhe, now, with self-doubt and truculence; his
eyes were on the photos of the heroes, beginning way back; Goddard. Von
Braun. Clifford, who had first landed on the far side of the Moon.
LaCrosse, who had reached Mercury, closest to the sun. Vasiliev, who had
just come back from the frozen moons of Jupiter, scoring a triumph for
the Tovies--somebody had started calling them that, a few years ago--up
in high Eurasia, the other side of an ideological rift that still
threatened the ever more crowded and competitive Earth, though mutual
fear had so far kept the flare ups within limits. Bannon, whose
expedition was even now exploring the gloomy cellar of Venus' surface,
smothered in steam, carbon dioxide and poisonous formaldehyde.

To Tiflin, as to the others, even such places were glamorous. But he
wanted to be a big shot, too. It was like a compulsion. He was touchy
and difficult. Three years back, he had been in trouble for breaking and
entering. Maybe his worship of space, and his desire to get there and
prove himself, were the only things that had kept him straight for so
long--grimly attentive at Tech, and at work at his car-washing job,
nights.

In his nervousness, now, he stuck a cigarette savagely between his lips,
and lighted it with a quick, arrogant gesture, hardly slowing down the
continuous toss and recovery of his knife.

This had begun to annoy big Art Kuzak. For one thing, Tiflin was doing
his trick too close to the mass of crinkly, cellophane-like stuff draped
over a horizontal wooden pole suspended by iron straps from the ceiling.
The crinkly mass was one of the Bunch's major projects--their first
space bubble, or bubb which they had been cutting and shaping with more
care and devotion than skill.

"Cripes--put that damn shiv away, Tif!" Art snapped. "Or lose it
someplace!"

Ramos, who was a part-time mechanic at the same garage where Tiflin
worked, couldn't help taunting. "Yeah--smoking, too. Oh-oh. Using up
precious oxygen. Better quit, pal. Can't do much of that Out There."

This was a wrong moment to rib Tiflin. He was in an instant flare. But
he ground out the cigarette at once, bitterly. "What do _you_ care what
I do, Mex?" he snarled. "And as for you two Hunky Kuzaks--you oversized
bulldozers--how about weight limits for blastoff? Damn--I don't care
_how_ big you are!"

In mounting rage, he was about to lash out with his fists, even at the
two watchful football men. But then he looked surprised. With a terrible
effort, he bottled up even his furious words.

The Bunch was a sort of family. Members of families may love each other,
but it doesn't have to happen. For a second it was as if Ramos had
Tiflin spitted on some barb of his taunting smile--aimed at Tiflin's
most vulnerable point.

Ramos clicked his tongue. What he was certainly going to remark was that
people who couldn't pass the emotional stability tests, just couldn't
get a space-fitness card. But Ramos wasn't unkind. He checked himself in
time. "No sweat, Tif," he muttered.

"Hey, Gimp--are you going to sit in that Archie all night?" Joe Kuzak,
the easy-going twin, boomed genially. "How about the rest of us?"

"Yeah--how about that, Gimp?" Dave Lester put in, trying to sound as
brash and bold as the others, instead of just bookish.

Two-and-Two Baines, still looking perplexed, spoke in a hoarse voice
that sounded like sorrow. "What I wanna know is just how far this fifty
buck price gets us. Guess we have enough dough left in the treasury to
buy us each an Archer Five, huh, Paul?"

Paul Hendricks rubbed his bald head and grinned in a way that attempted
to prove him a disinterested sideliner. "Ask Frank," he said. "He's your
historian-secretary and treasurer."

Frank Nelsen came out of his attitude of observation enough to warn,
"That much we've got, if we want as many as twelve Archies. And a little
better than a thousand dollars more, left over from the prize money."

They had won twenty-five hundred dollars during the summer for building
a working model of a sun-powered ionic drive motor--the kind useful for
deep-space propulsion, but far too weak in thrust to be any good,
starting from the ground. The contest had been sponsored by--of all
outfits--a big food chain, Trans-Columbia. But this wasn't so strange.
Everybody was interested in, or affected by, interplanetary travel, now.

On a workbench, standing amid a litter of metal chips and scraps of
color-coded wire, was the Bunch's second ionic, full-size this time, and
almost finished. On crossed arms it mounted four parabolic mirrors; its
ion guide was on a universal joint. Out There, in orbit or beyond, and
in full, spatial sunlight, its jetting ions would deliver ten pounds of
continuous thrust.

"A thousand bucks--that's nowhere near enough," Two-and-Two mourned
further. "Doggone, why can't we get blasted up off the Earth--that costs
the most, all by itself--just in our Archies? They've got those little
ionic drives on their shoulders, to get around with, after we're in
orbit. Lots of asteroid hoppers live and ride only in their space suits.
Why do they make us get all that other expensive equipment? Space bubbs,
full-size ionics, lots of fancy instruments!"

"'Cause it isn't legal, otherwise," Mitch Storey pointed out. "'Cause
new men are green--it isn't safe for them, otherwise--the
Extra-Terrestrial Commission thinks. Got to have all the gear to get
clearance. Travelling light isn't even legal in the Belt. You know
that."

"Maybe we'll win us another prize," Ramos laughed, touching the crinkly
substance of their first bubb, hanging like a deflated balloon over the
ceiling pole.

Tiflin sneered. "Oh, sure, you dumb Mex. Too many other Bunches, now.
Too much competition. Like companies starting up on the Moon not hiring
ordinary help on Earth and shipping them out, anymore--saying contract
guys don't stick. Nuts--it's because enough slobs save them the expense
by showing up on their own... Or like most all of us trying to get into
the Space Force. The _Real Elite_--sure. Only 25,000 in the Force, when
there are over 200,000,000 people in the country to draw from. Just one
guy from Jarviston--Harv Diamond--ever made it. Choosy? We can get old
waiting for them to review our submitted personal data, only to have a
chance to take their lousy tests!"

Joe Kuzak grinned. "So down with 'em--down with the worthy old U.S.S.F.!
We're on our own--to Serenitatis Base on the Moon, to the Belt,
Pallastown, and farther!"

Ramos still hovered near Eileen Sands. "What do you say, Sweetie?" he
asked. "You haven't hardly made a comment."

Eileen remained tough and withdrawn. "I'm just listening while you smart
male characters figure out everything," she snapped. "Why don't you
become a listener, too, for a change, and go help Gimp out of that
Archer?"

Ramos bowed elegantly, and obeyed the latter half of her suggestion.

"I have a premonition--a hunch," little Lester offered, trying to sound
firm. "Our request for a grant from the Extra-Terrestrial Development
Board will succeed. Because we will be as valuable as anybody, Out
There. Then we will have money enough to buy the materials to make most
of our equipment."

Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, answered him. "You're right about one
thing, Les. We'll wind up building most of our own stuff--with our own
mitts...!"

Some noisy conversation about who should try the Archer next, was
interrupted when the antique customer's bell over the street door of
the store, jangled. There was a scrape of shoe soles, as the two
previously absent members of the Bunch, Jig Hollins and Charlie
Reynolds, arriving together by chance, came into the shop.

Jig (Hilton) Hollins was a mechanic out at the airport. He was lean,
cocky, twenty-four, with a stiff bristle of blond hair. Like Charlie
Reynolds, he added up what had just been happening, here, at a glance.
Both were older than the others. They had regular jobs. Their educations
were completed, except for evening supplementary courses.

"Well, the _men_ have arrived," Jig announced.

Maybe Charlie Reynolds' faint frown took exception to this remark. He
was the only one in a suit, grey and tasteful, with a subdued flash to
match the kind of car he drove. Few held this against him, nor the fact
that he usually spent himself broke, nor the further fact that J. John
Reynolds, tight-fisted president of the Jarviston First National Bank,
was his grandfather. Charlie was an engineer at the new nuclear
powerhouse, just out of town. Charlie was what is generally known as a
Good Guy. He was brash and sure--maybe too sure. He had a slight
swagger, balanced by a certain benignancy. He was automatically the
leader of the Bunch, held most likely to succeed in their aims.

"Hi, gang," he breezed. "Otto is bringing beer, Pepsi and sandwiches
from his joint across the street. Special day--so it's on me. Time to
relax--maybe unsnarl. Any new problems?"

"Still plenty of old ones," Frank Nelsen commented laconically.

"Has anybody suddenly decided to back out?" Charlie chuckled. "It's
tiresome for me always to be asking that." He looked around, meeting
carefully easy grins and grim expressions. "Nope--I guess we're all
shaggy folk, bent on high and wild living, so far. So you know the only
answer we _can_ have."

"Umhmm, Charlie," Art Kuzak, the tough, business-like twin, gruffed. "We
can get the Archers, now. I think Frank has our various sizes noted
down. Let everybody sign up that wants an Archie. Better hurry,
though--there'll be a run on them now that they're being almost given
away... List all the other stuff we need--with approximate purchase
price, or cost of construction materials, attached. Sure--we'll be way
short of funds. But we can start with the items we can make, ourselves,
now. The point is not to lose time. New restrictions may turn up, and
give us trouble, if we do. We'll have to ride our luck for a break."

"Hell--you know the lists are ready, Art," Frank Nelsen pointed out. "A
bubb for everybody--or the stuff to make it. Full-scale ionic drives,
air-restorers and moisture-reclaimers, likewise. Some of the navigation
instruments we'll almost have to buy. Dehydrated food, flasks of oxygen
and water, and blastoff drums to contain our gear, are all relatively
simple. Worst, of course, is the blastoff price, from one of the
spaceports. Who could be rich enough to have a ground-to-orbit nuclear
rocket of his own? Fifteen hundred bucks--a subsidized rate at
that--just to lift a man and a thousand pounds of equipment into orbit.
Five thousand dollars, minimum per person, is what we're going to need,
altogether."

Gimp Hines, who always acted as if he expected to get off the Earth,
too, had yielded his position inside the Archer to Tiflin, and had
hobbled close.

"The cost scares a guy who has to go to school, too, so he can pass the
tests," he said. "Well, don't worry, Frank. A thousand dollars buys a
lot of stellene for bubbs. And we can scratch up a few bucks of our own.
I can find a hundred, myself, saved from my TV repair work, and my
novelties business. Charlie, here, ought to be able to contribute a
thousand. Same for you, Hollins. That'll buy parts and materials for
some ionic motors, too."

"Oh, certainly, Gimp," Hollins growled.

But Charlie Reynolds grinned. "I can kick in that much, if I hold down a
while," he said. "Maybe more, later. What we've got to have, however, is
a loan. We can't expect a grant from the Board. Sure they want more
people helping to develop resources in space, but they're swamped with
requests. Let's not sweat, though. With a little time, I'll swing
something... Hey, everybody! Proposition! I move that whoever wants an
Archer put his name down for Frank. I further move that we have him
order us a supply of stellene, and basic materials for at least three
more ionic motors. I also suggest that everybody donate as much cash as
he can, no matter how little, and as much time as possible for making
equipment. With luck, and if we get our applications for space-fitness
tests mailed to Minneapolis within a week, at least some of us should
get off Earth by next June. Now, shall we sign for the whole deal?"

Art Kuzak hunched his shoulders and displayed white teeth happily. "I'm
a pushover," he said. "Here I come. I like to see things roll."

"Likewise," said his brother, Joe. Their signatures were both small, in
contrast to their size.

Ramos, fully clad in the Archer, clowned his way forward to write his
name with great flourishes, his ball point clutched in a space glove.

Tiflin made a fierce, nervous scrawl.

Mitch Storey wrote patiently, in big, square letters.

Gimp chewed his lip, and signed, "Walter Hines," in a beautiful, austere
script, with a touch as fine as a master scientist's. "I'll go along as
far as they let me," he muttered.

"I think it will be the same--in my case," David Lester stammered. He
shook so much that his signature was only a quavering line.

"For laughs," Eileen Sands said, and wrote daintily.

Two-and-Two Baines gulped, sighed, and made a jagged scribble, like the
trail of a rocket gone nuts.

Jig Hollins wrote in swooping, arrogant circles, that came, perhaps,
from his extra jobs as an advertising sky writer with an airplane.

Frank Nelsen was next, and Charlie Reynolds was last. Theirs were the
most indistinctive signatures in the lot. Just ordinary writing.

"So here we all are, on a piece of paper--pledged to victory or death,"
Reynolds laughed. "Anyhow, we're out of a rut."

Nelsen figured that that was the thing about Charlie Reynolds. Some
might not like him, entirely. But he could get the Bunch unsnarled and
in motion.

Old Paul Hendricks had come back from waiting on some casual customers
in the store.

"Want to sign, too, Paul?" Reynolds chuckled.

"Nope--that would make thirteen," Paul answered, his eyes twinkling.
"I'll watch and listen--and maybe tell you if I think you're off beam."

"Here comes Otto with the beer and sandwiches," Ramos burst out.

They all crowded around heavy Otto Kramer and his basket--all except
Frank Nelsen and Paul Hendricks, and Eileen Sands who made the ancient
typewriter click in the little office-enclosure, as she typed up the
order list that Nelsen would mail out with a bank draft in the morning.

Nelsen had a powerful urge to talk to the old man who was his long-time
friend, and who had said little all during the session, though he knew
more about space travel than any of them--as much as anybody can know
without ever having been off the Earth.

"Hey, Paul," Frank called in a low tone, leaning his elbows across a
workbench.

"Yeah?"

"Nothing," Frank Nelsen answered with a lopsided smile.

But he felt that that was the right word, when your thoughts and
feelings became too huge and complicated for you to express with any
ease.

Grandeur, poetry, music--for instance, the haunting popular song, _Fire
Streak_, about the burial of a spaceman--at orbital speed--in the
atmosphere of his native planet. And fragments of history, such as
covered wagons. All sorts of subjects, ideas and pictures were swirling
inside his head. Wanting to sample everything in the solar system...
Home versus the distance, and the fierce urge to build a wild history of
his own... Gentleness and lust to be fulfilled, sometime. There would be
a girl... And there were second thoughts to twist your guts and make you
wonder if all your savage drives were foolish. But there was a duty to
be equal to your era--helping to give dangerously crowded humanity on
Earth more room, dispersal, a chance for race survival, if some
unimaginable violence were turned loose...

He thought of the names of places Out There. Serenitatis
Base--Serene--on the Moon. Lusty, fantastic Pallastown, on the Golden
Asteroid, Pallas... He remembered his parents, killed in a car wreck
just outside of Jarviston, four Christmases ago. Some present!... But
there was one small benefit--he was left free to go where he wanted,
without any family complications, like other guys might have. Poor Dave
Lester. How was it that his mother allowed him to be with the Bunch at
all? How did he work it? Or was she the one that was right?...

Paul Hendricks had leaned his elbows on the workbench, too.
"Sure--_nothing_--Frank," he said, and his watery eyes were bland.

The old codger understood. Neither of them said anything for a minute,
while the rest of the Bunch, except Eileen who was still typing, guzzled
Pepsi and beer, and wolfed hotdogs. There was lots of courage-lifting
noise and laughter.

Ramos said something, and Jig Hollins answered him back. "Think there'll
be any girls in grass skirts out in the Asteroid Belt, Mex?"

"Oh, they'll arrive," Ramos assured him.

Nelsen didn't listen anymore. His and Paul's attention had wandered to
the largest color photo thumbtacked to the wall, above the TV set, and
the shelf of dog-eared technical books. It showed a fragile, pearly
ring, almost diaphanous, hanging tilted against spatial blackness and
pinpoint stars. Its hub was a cylindrical spindle, with radial guys of
fine, stainless steel wire. It was like the earliest ideas about a space
station, yet it was also different. To many--Frank Nelsen and Paul
Hendricks certainly included--such devices had as much beauty as a yacht
under full sail had ever had for anybody.

Old Paul smirked with pleasure. "It's a shame, ain't it, Frank--calling
a pretty thing like that a 'bubb'--it's an ugly word. Or even a 'space
bubble.' Technical talk gets kind of cheap."

"I don't mind," Frank Nelsen answered. "Our first one, here, could look
just as nice--inflated, and riding free against the stars."

He touched the crinkly material, draped across its wooden support.

"It _will_," the old man promised. "Funny--not so long ago people
thought that space ships would have to be really rigid--all metal. So
how did they turn out? Made of stellene, mostly--an improved form of
polyethylene--almost the same stuff as a weather balloon."

"A few millimeters thick, light, perfectly flexible when deflated,"
Nelsen added. "Cut out and cement your bubb together in any shape you
choose. Fold it up firmly, like a parachute--it makes a small package
that can be carried up into orbit in a blastoff rocket with the best
efficiency. There, attached flasks of breathable atmosphere fill it out
in a minute. Eight pounds pressure makes it fairly solid in a vacuum.
So, behold--you've got breathing and living room, inside. There's nylon
cording for increased strength--as in an automobile tire--though not
nearly as much. There's a silicone gum between the thin double layers,
to seal possible meteor punctures. A darkening lead-salt impregnation in
the otherwise transparent stellene cuts radiation entry below the danger
level, and filters the glare and the hard ultra-violet out of the
sunshine. So there you are, all set up."

"Rig your hub and guy wires," old Paul carried on, cheerfully. "Attach
your sun-powered ionic drive, set up your air-restorer, spin your
vehicle for centrifuge-gravity, and you're ready to move--out of orbit."

They laughed, because getting into space wasn't as easy as they made it
sound. The bubbs, one of the basic inventions that made interplanetary
travel possible, were, for all their almost vagabondish simplicity,
still a concession in lightness and compactness for atmospheric transit,
to that first and greatest problem--breaking the terrific initial grip
of Earth's gravity from the ground upward, and gaining stable orbital
speed. Only a tremendously costly rocket, with a thrust greater than its
own weight when fully loaded, could do that. Buying a blastoff passage
_had_ to be expensive.

"Figuring, scrounging, counting our pennies, risking our necks," Nelsen
chuckled. "And maybe, even if we make it, we'll be just a third-rate
group, lost in the crowd that's following the explorers... Just the
same, I wish you could plan to go, too, Paul."

"Don't rub it in, kid. But I figure on kicking in a couple of thousand
bucks, soon, to help you characters along."

Nelsen felt an embarrassed lift of hope.

"You shouldn't, Paul," he advised. "We've overrun and taken possession
of your shop--almost your store, too. You've waived any profit, whenever
we've bought anything. That's enough favors."

"My dough, my pleasure... Let's each get one of Reynolds' beers and
hotdogs, if any are left..."

Later, when all the others had gone, except Gimp Hines, they uncovered
the Archer, which everyone else had tried. Paul got into it, first. Then
Nelsen took his turn, sitting as if within an inclosed vault, hearing
the gurgle of bubbles passing through the green, almost living fluid of
the air-restorer capsule. Chlorophane, like the chlorophyl of green
plants, could break up exhaled carbon dioxide, freeing the oxygen for
re-breathing. But it was synthetic, far more efficient, and it could use
much stronger sunlight as an energy source. Like chlorophyl, too, it
produced edible starches and sugars that could be imbibed, mixed with
water, through a tube inside the Archer's helmet.

Even with the Archer enclosing him, Nelsen's mind didn't quite reach. He
had learned a lot about space, but it remained curiously inconceivable
to him. He felt the frost-fringed thrill.

"Now we know--a little," he chortled, after he stood again, just in his
usual garb.

It was almost eight o'clock. Gimp Hines hadn't gone to supper, or to
celebrate decision on one of the last evenings of any kind of freedom
from work. He couldn't wait for that... Under fluorescent lights, he was
threading wire through miniature grommets, hurrying to complete the
full-size ionic drive. He said, "Hi, Frank," and let his eyes drop,
again, into absorption in his labors. Mad little guy. Tragic, sort of. A
cripple...

"I'll shove off, Paul," Nelsen was saying in a moment.

Out under the significant stars of the crisp October night, Nelsen was
approached at once by a shadow. "I was waiting for you, Frank. I got a
problem." The voice was hoarse sorrow--almost lugubrious comedy.

"Math again, Two-and-Two? Sure--shoot."

"Well--that kind is always around--with me," Two-and-Two Baines chuckled
shakily. "This is something else--personal. We're liable--honest to
gosh--to _go_, aren't we?"

"Some of us, maybe," Nelsen replied warily. "Sixty thousand bucks for
the whole Bunch looks like a royal heap of cabbage to me."

"Split among a dozen guys, it looks smaller," Two-and-Two persisted.
"And you can earn royal dough on the Moon--just for example. Plenty to
pay back a loan."

"Still, you don't pick loans off trees," Nelsen gruffed. "Not for a
shoestring crowd like us. We look too unsubstantial."

"Okay, Frank--have that part your way. I believe there still is a good
chance we _will_ go. I _want_ to go. But I get to thinking. Out There is
like being buried in millions of miles of nothing that you can breathe.
Can a guy stand it? You hear stories about going loopy from
claustrophobia and stuff. And I got to think about my mother and dad."

"Uh-huh--other people could be having minor second thoughts--including
me," Frank Nelsen growled.

"You don't get what I mean, Frank. Sure I'm scared some--but I'm gonna
try to go. Well, here's my point. I'm strong, willing, not too clumsy.
But I'm no good at figuring what to do. So, Out There, in order to have
a reasonable chance, I'll have to be following somebody smart. I thought
I'd fix it now--beforehand. You're the best, Frank."

Nelsen felt the scared earnestness of the appeal, and the achy shock of
the compliment. But in his own uncertainty, he didn't want to be
carrying any dead weight, in the form of a dependent individual.

"Thanks, Two-and-Two," he said. "But I can't see myself as any leader,
either. Talk about it to me tomorrow, if you still feel like it. Right
now I want to sweat out a few things for myself--alone."

"Of course, Frankie." And Two-and-Two was gone.

Frank Nelsen looked upward, over the lighted street. There was no
Moon--site of many enterprises, these days--in the sky, now. Old Jupiter
rode in the south. A weather-spotting satellite crept across zenith,
winking red and green. A skip glider, an orbit-to-ground freight
vehicle, possibly loaded with rich metals from the Belt, probably about
to land at the New Mexico spaceport far to the west, moved near it.
Frank felt a deliciously lonesome chill as he walked through the
business section of Jarviston. From somewhere, dance music lilted.

In front of Lehman's Drug Store he looked skyward again, to see a
dazzling white cluster, like many meteors, falling. The gorgeous display
lasted more than a second.

"Good heavens, Franklin Nelsen--what was that?"

He looked down at the slight, aging woman, and stiffened slightly. Miss
Rosalie Parks had been his Latin teacher in high school. Plenty of times
she used to scold him for not having his translations of Caesar worked
out. A lot she understood about a fella who had to spend plenty of time
working to support himself, while attending school!

"Good evening, Miss Parks," he greeted rather stiffly. "I think it was
that manned weather satellite dumping garbage. It hits the atmosphere at
orbital velocity, and is incinerated."

She seemed to be immensely pleased and amused. "Garbage becoming beauty!
That is rather wonderful, Franklin. I'll remember. Thank you and good
night."

She marched off with the small purchase she had made, in the direction
opposite his own.

He got almost to the house where he had his room, when there was another
encounter. But it was nothing new to run into Nancy Codiss, the spindly
fifteen-year-old next door. He had a sudden, unbelievably expansive
impulse.

"Hi, Nance," he said. "I didn't get much supper. Let's go down to
Lehman's for a hamburger and maybe a soda."

"Why--_good_--Frankie!"

They didn't talk very much, walking down, waiting for their orders, or
eating their hamburgers. But she wasn't as spindly as he used to think.
And her dark hair, even features and slim hands were nicer than he
recalled.

"I hear you fellas got your space-armor sample, Frank."

"Yep--we did. We're ordering more."

Her expression became speculative. Her brown eyes lighted. "I've been
wondering if I should look Outward, too. Whether it makes sense--for a
girl."

"Could be--I've heard."

Their conversation went something like that, throughout, with long
silences. Finally she smiled at him, very brightly.

"The Junior Fall dance is in two weeks," she said. "But I guess you'll
be too busy to be interested?"

"'Guess' just isn't the word, Nance. I regret that--truly."

He looked and sounded as though he meant it. In some crazy way, it
seemed that he _did_ mean it.

He walked her home. Then he went to the next house, and up to his rented
room. He showered, and for once climbed very early into bed, feeling
that he must have nightmares. About strange sounds in the thin winds,
over the mysterious thickets of Mars. Or about some blackened, dried-out
body of a sentient being, sixty million years dead, floating free in the
Asteroid Belt. A few had been found. Some were in museums.

Instead, he slept the dreamless sleep of the just--if there was any
particular reason for him to consider himself just.




II


Gimp Hines put the finishing touches on the first full-scale ionic
during that next week. The others of the Bunch, each working when he
could, completed cementing the segments of the first bubb together.

On a Sunday morning they carried the bubb out into the yard behind the
store and test inflated the thirty-foot ring by means of a line of hose
from the compressor in the shop. Soapsuds dabbed along the seams
revealed a few leaks by its bubbling. These were fixed up.

By late afternoon the Bunch had folded up the bubb again, and were
simulating its practice launching from a ground-to-orbit rocket--as well
as can be done on the ground with a device intended only for use in a
state of weightlessness, when the operators are supposed to be
weightless, too. The impossibility of establishing such conditions
produced some ludicrous results:

The two Kuzaks diving with a vigor, as if from a rocket airlock, hitting
the dirt with a thud, scrambling up, opening and spreading the great
bundle, attaching the air hose. Little Lester hopping in to help fit
wire rigging, most of it still imaginary. A friendly dog coming over to
sniff, with a look of mild wonder in his eyes.

"Laugh, you leather-heads!" Art Kuzak roared at the others. He grinned,
wiping his muddy face. "We've got to learn, don't we? Only, it's like
make-believe. Hell, I haven't played make-believe since I was four! But
if we keep doing it here, all the kids and townspeople will be peeking
over the fence to see how nuts we've gone."

This was soon literally true. In some embarrassment, the Bunch rolled up
their bubb and lugged it into the shop.

"I can borrow a construction compressor unit on a truck," Two-and-Two
offered. "And there's a farm I know..."

A great roll of stellene tubing, to have a six-feet six-inch inside
diameter when inflated, was delivered on Monday. Enough for three bubbs.
The Archer Fives were expected to be somewhat delayed, due to massive
ordering. But small boxes of parts and raw stock for the ionics had
begun to arrive, too. Capacitors, resistors, thermocouple units.
Magnesium rods for Storey or Ramos or the Kuzaks to shape in a lathe.
Sheet aluminum to be spun and curved and polished. With Eileen Sands
helping, Gimp Hines would do most of that.

So the real work began. Nobody in the Bunch denied that it was a grind.
For most, there were those tough courses at Tech. And a job, for money,
for sustenance. And the time that must be spent working for--Destiny.
Sleep was least important--a few hours, long after midnight, usually.

Frank Nelsen figured that he had it relatively easy--almost as easy as
the Kuzak twins, who, during football season, were under strict orders
to get their proper sack time. He worked at Hendricks'--old Paul didn't
mind his combining the job with his labors of aspiration. Ramos, the
night-mechanic, Tiflin, the car-washer, and Two-and-Two Baines, the
part-time bricklayer, didn't have it so easy. Eileen, a first-rate legal
typist employed for several hours a day by a partnership of lawyers,
could usually work from notes, at the place where she lived.

Two-and-Two would lift a big hand facetiously, when he came into the
shop. Blinking and squinting, he would wiggle his fingers. "I can still
see 'em--to count!" he would moan. "Thanks, all you good people, for
coaching me in my math."

"Think nothing of it," Charlie Reynolds or David Lester, or most any of
the others, would tell him. Two-and-Two hadn't come near Frank Nelsen
very much, during the last few days, though Frank had tried to be
friendly.

Lester was the only one without an activity to support himself. But he
was at the shop every weekday, six to ten p.m., cementing stellene with
meticulous care, while he muttered and dreamed.

The Bunch griped about courses, jobs, and the stubbornness of materials,
but they made progress. They had built their first bubb and ionic. The
others would be easier.

Early in November, Nelsen collected all available fresh capital,
including a second thousand from Paul Hendricks and five hundred from
Charlie Reynolds, and sent it in with new orders.

That about exhausted their own finances for a long time to come. Seven
bubbs, minus most of even their simpler fittings, and five ionics,
seemed as much as they could pay for, themselves. Charlie Reynolds
hadn't yet lined up a backer.

"We should have planned to outfit one guy completely," Jig Hollins
grumbled on a Sunday afternoon at the shop. "Then we could have drawn
lots about who gets a chance to use the gear. That we goofed there is
your fault, Reynolds. Or--your Grandpappy didn't come through, huh?"

Charlie met Hollins' sneering gaze for a moment. "Never mind the
'Grandpappy', Jig," he said softly. "I knew that chances weren't good,
there. However, there are other prospects which I'm working on. I
remember mentioning that it might take time. As for your other remarks,
what good is equipping just one person? I thought that this was a
project for all of us."

"I'm with Charlie," Joe Kuzak commented.

"Don't fight, guys--we've got to figure on training, too," Ramos
laughed. "I've got the problem of an expensive training centrifuge about
beat. Out at my old motor scooter club. Come on, Charlie--you, too,
Jig--get your cars and let's go! It's only seven miles, and we all need
a break."

Paul Hendricks had gone for a walk. So Nelsen locked the shop, and they
all tore off, out to the place, Ramos leading the way in his scooter. At
the scooter club they found an ancient carnival device which used to be
called a motordrome. It was a vertical wooden cylinder, like a huge,
ironbound, straight sided cask, thirty feet high and wide, standing on
its bottom.

Ramos let himself and the scooter through a massive, curved
door--conforming to the curvature of the walls--at the base of the
'drome.

"Secure the latch bar of this door from the outside, fellas," he said.
"Then go to the gallery around the top to watch."

Ramos started riding his scooter in a tight circle around the bottom of
the 'drome. Increasing speed, he swung outward to the ramped juncture
between floor and smooth, circular walls. Then, moving still faster, he
was riding around the vertical walls, themselves, held there by
centrifugal force. He climbed his vehicle to the very rim of the great
cask, body out sideways, grinning and balancing, hands free, the
squirrel tails flapping from his gaudily repainted old scooter.

"Come on, you characters!" he shouted through the noise and smoke. "You
should try this, too! It's good practice for the rough stuff to come,
when we blast out!... Hey, Eileen--you try it first--ride with me--then
alone--when you get the hang of it!..."

This time she accepted. Soon she was riding by herself, smiling
recklessly. Reynolds rode after that, then the Kuzaks. Like most of
them, Frank Nelsen took the scooter up alone, from the start. He was a
bit scared at first, but if you couldn't do a relatively simple stunt
like this, how could you get along in space? He became surer, then
gleeful, even when the centrifugal force made his head giddy, pushed his
buttocks hard against the scooter's seat, and his insides down against
his pelvis.

Storey, Hollins and Tiflin all accomplished it. Even Gimp Hines rode
behind Ramos in some very wild gyrations, though he didn't attempt to
guide the scooter, himself.

Then it was David Lester's turn. It was a foregone conclusion that he
couldn't take the scooter up, alone. Palefaced, he rode double. Ramos
was careful this time. But on the downward curve before coming to rest,
the change of direction made Lester grab Ramos' arm at a critical
instant. The scooter wavered, and they landed hard, even at reduced
speed. Agile Ramos skipped clear, landing on his feet. Lester flopped
heavily, and skidded across the bottom of the 'drome.

When the guys got to him, he was covered with friction burns, and with
blood from a scalp gash. Ramos, Storey and Frank worked on him to get
him cleaned up and patched up. Part of the time he was sobbing bitterly,
more from failure, it seemed, than from his physical hurt. By luck there
didn't seem to be any bones broken.

"Darn!" he choked in some infinite protest, beating the ground with his
fists. "Damn--that's the end of it for me...! So soon... Pop..."

"I'll drive you to Doc Miller's, Les," Charlie Reynolds said briskly.
"Then home. You other people better stay here..."

Charlie had a baffled, subdued look, when he returned an hour later. "I
thought his mother would chew my ear, sure," he said. "She didn't. She
was just polite. That was worse. She's small--not much color. Of course
she was scared, and mad clean through. Know her?"

"I guess we've all seen her around," Nelsen answered. "Widow. Les was in
one of my classes during my first high school year. He was a senior,
then. They haven't been in Jarviston more than a few years. I never
heard where they came from..."

Warily, back at the shop, the Bunch told Paul what had happened.

For once his pale eyes flashed. "You Bright Boys," he said. "Especially
you, Ramos...! Well, I'm most to blame. I let him hang around, because
he was so doggone interested. And _driven_--somehow. Lucky nothing too
bad happened. Last August, when you romantics got serious about space, I
made him prove he was over twenty-one..."

They sweated it out, expecting ear-burning phone calls, maybe legal
suits. Nothing happened. Nelsen felt relieved that Lester was gone. One
dangerous link in a chain was removed. Contempt boosted his own arrogant
pride of accomplishment. Then pity came, and anger for the sneers of Jig
Hollins. Then regret for a fallen associate.

The dozen Archers were delivered--there would be a spare, now. The Bunch
continued building equipment, they worked out in the motordrome, they
drilled at donning their armor and at inflating and rigging a bubb. Gimp
Hines exercised with fierce, perspiring doggedness on a horizontal bar
he had rigged in the back of the shop. He meant to compensate for his
bad leg by improving his shoulder muscles.

Most of the guys still figured that Charlie Reynolds would solve their
money problem. But in late November he had a bad moment. Out in front of
Hendricks', he looked at his trim automobile. "It's a cinch I can't use
it Out There," he chuckled ruefully and unprompted. Then he brightened.
"Nope--selling it wouldn't bring one tenth enough, anyhow. I'll get what
we need--just got to keep trying... I don't know why, but some so-called
experts are saying that off-the-Earth enterprises have been
overextended. That makes finding a backer a bit tougher than I thought."

"You ought to just take off on your own, Reynolds," Jig Hollins
suggested airily. "I'll bet it's in your mind. The car would pay for
that. Or since you're a full-fledged nuclear engineer, some company on
the Moon might give you a three year contract and send you out free in a
comfortable vehicle. Or wouldn't you like to be tied that long? I
wouldn't. Maybe I could afford to be an independent, too. Tough on these
shoestring boys, here, but is it _our_ fault?"

Hollins was trying to taunt Reynolds. "You're tiresome, Jig," Reynolds
said without heat. "Somebody's going to poke you sometime..."

Next morning, before going to classes at Tech, Frank Nelsen, with the
possibility of bitter disappointment looming in his own mind, spotted
Glen Tiflin, the switch blade tosser, standing on the corner, not quite
opposite the First National Bank. Tiflin's mouth was tight and his eyes
were narrowed.

Nelsen felt a tingle in his nerves--very cold.

"Hi--what cooks, Tif?" he said mildly.

"To you it's which?" Tiflin snapped.

Nelson led him on. "Sometimes I think of all the dough in that bank," he
said.

"Yeah," Tiflin snarled softly. "That old coot, Charlie Reynolds'
grandpa, sitting by his vault door. Too obvious, though--here. Maybe in
another bank--in another town. We could get the cash we need. Hell,
though--be cavalier--it's just a thought."

"You damned fool!" Nelsen hissed slowly.

It was harder than ever to like Tiflin for anything at all. But he did
have that terrible, star-reaching desperation. Nelsen had quite a bit of
it, himself. He knew, now.

"Get up to Tech, Tif," he said like an order. "If you have a chance,
tell my math prof I might be a little late..."

That was how Frank Nelsen happened to face J. John Reynolds, who, in a
question of progress, would still approve of galley slaves. Nelsen had
heard jokes like that laughed about, around Jarviston. J. John, by
reputation, was all hard business.

Nelsen got past his secretary.

"Young man--I hope you have something very special to say."

There was a cold, amused challenge in the old man's tone, and an
implication of a moment of casual audience granted generously, amid
mountains of more important affairs.

Nelsen didn't waver. The impulse to do what he was doing had come too
suddenly for nervousness to build up. He hadn't planned what to say, but
his arguments were part of himself.

"Mr. Reynolds--I'm Frank Nelsen, born here in Jarviston. Perhaps you
know me on sight. I believe you are acquainted with Paul Hendricks, and
you must have heard about our group, which is aiming at space, as people
like ourselves are apt to be doing, these days. We've made fair
progress, which proves we're at least earnest, if not dedicated. But
unless we wait and save for years, we've come about as far as we can,
without a loan. Judging from the success of previous earnest groups, and
the development of resources and industries beyond the Earth, we are
sure that we could soon pay you back, with considerable interest."

J. John Reynolds seemed to doze, hardly listening. But at the end his
eyes opened, and sparks of anger--or acid humor--seemed to dance in
them.

"I know very well what sort of poetic tomfoolery you are talking about,
Nelsen," he said. "I wondered how long it would be before one of
you--other than my grandson with his undiluted brass, and knowing me far
too well in one sense, anyway--would have the gall to come here and talk
to me like this. You'd probably be considered a minor, too, in some
states. Dealing with you, I could even get into trouble."

Nelsen's mouth tightened. "I came to make a proposition and get an
answer," he responded. "Thank you for your no. It helps clear the view."

"Hold on, Nelsen," J. John growled. "I don't remember saying no. I said
'gall,' intending it to mean guts. That's what young spacemen need,
isn't it? They've almost got to be _young_, so legal viewpoints about
the age at which competence is reached are changing. Oh, there is plenty
of brass among your generation. But it fails in peculiar places. I was
waiting for one place where it didn't fail. Charlie, my grandson,
doesn't count. It has never taken him any courage to talk to me any way
he wants."

This whole encounter was still dreamlike to Frank Nelsen.

"Then you are saying yes?"

"I might. Do you foolishly imagine that my soul is so completely sour
milk that in youth I couldn't feel the same drives that you feel, now,
for the limited opportunity there was, then? But under some damnable
pressure toward conformity, I took a desk job in a bank. I am now
eighty-one years old... How much does your 'Bunch' need--at minimum,
mind you--for the opportunity to ride in space-armor till the rank smell
of their bodies almost chokes them, for developing weird allergies or
going murdering mad, but, in the main, doing their best, anyway,
pathfinding and building, if they've got the guts? Come on, Nelsen--you
must know."

"Fifty thousand," Frank answered quickly. "There are still eleven in our
group."

"Yes... More may quit along the way... Here is _my_ proposition: I would
make funds available for your expenses up to that amount--from my
personal holdings, separate from this bank. The amount due from each
individual shall be ten percent of whatever his gains or earnings are,
off the Earth, over a period of ten years, but he will not be required
to pay back any part of the original loan. This is a high-risk,
high-potential profit arrangement for me--with an experimental element.
I will ask for no written contract--only a verbal promise. I have found
that people are fairly honest, and I know that, far in space,
circumstances become too complicated to make legal collections very
practical, anyway, even if I ever felt inclined to try them... Now,
if--after I see your friends, whom you will send to me for an interview
and to give me their individual word, also, I decide to make my
proposition effective--will you, yourself, promise to abide by these
terms?"

Nelsen was wary for a second. "Yes--I promise," he said.

"Good. I am glad you paused to think, Nelsen. I am not fabulously rich.
But having more or less money hardly matters to me at this late date, so
I am not likely to try to trap you. Yet there is still a game to play,
and an outcome to watch--the future. Now get out of here before you
become ridiculous by saying more than a casual thanks."

"All right--thanks. Thank you, sir..."

Nelsen felt somewhat numb. But a faint, golden glow was increasing
inside his mind.

Tiflin hadn't gone up to Tech. He was still waiting on the street
corner. "What the hell, Frank?" he said.

"I think we've got the loan, Tif. But he wants to see all of us. Can you
go in there, be polite, say you're a Bunch member, make a promise,
and--above all--avoid blowing your top? Boy--if you queer this...!"

Tiflin's mouth was open. "You kidding?"

"No!"

Tiflin gulped, and actually looked subdued. "Okay, Frank. Be cavalier.
Hell, I'd croak before I'd mess this up...!"

By evening, everybody had visited J. John Reynolds, including Charlie
Reynolds and Jig Hollins. Nelsen got the backslapping treatment.

Charlie sighed, rubbed his head, then grinned with immense relief.
"That's a load off," he said. "Glad to have somebody else fix it.
Congrats, Frank. I wonder if Otto has got any champagne to go with the
hotdogs...?"

Otto had a bottle--enough for a taste, all around. Eileen kissed Frank
impulsively. "You ought to get _real_ smart," she said.

"Uh-huh," he answered. "Now let's get some beer--more our speed."

But none of them overdid the beer either...

Just after New Year's they had eight bubbs completed, tested, folded
carefully according to government manuals, and stowed in an attic they
had rented over Otto's place. They had seven ionics finished and stored.
More parts and materials were arriving. The air-restorers were going to
be the toughest and most expensive to make. They were the really vital
things to a spaceman. Every detail had to be carefully fitted and
assembled. The chlorophane contained costly catalytic agents.

A winter of hard work was ahead, but they figured on a stretch of clear
sailing, now. They didn't expect anyone to shake their morale, least of
all a nice, soft-spoken guy in U.S.S.F. greys. Harv Diamond was the one
man from Jarviston who had gotten into the Space Force. He used to hang
around Hendricks'.

He dropped in on a Sunday evening, when the whole Bunch was in the shop.
They were around him at once, like around a hero, shouting and
questioning. There were mottled patches on his hands, and he wore dark
glasses, but he seemed at ease and happy.

"There have been some changes in the old joint, huh, Paul?" he said. "So
you guys are one of the outfits building its own gear... Looks pretty
good... Of course you can get some bulky supplies cheaper on the Moon,
because everything from Earth has to be boosted into space against a
gravity six times as great as the lunar, which raises the price like
hell. Water and oxygen, for instance. Peculiar, on the dry, almost
airless Moon. But roasting water out of lunar gypsum rock is an easy
trick. And oxygen can be derived from water by simple electrolysis."

"Hell, we know all that, Harv," Ramos laughed.

So Harv Diamond gave them the lowdown on the shortage of girls--yet--in
Serenitatis Base, on the Moon. Just the same, it was growing like corn
in July, and was already a pretty good leave-spot, if you liked to look
around. Big vegetable gardens under sealed, stellene domes. Metal
refineries, solar power plants, plastic factories and so forth, already
in operation... But there was nothing like Pallastown, on little Pallas,
out in the Asteroid Belt... Mars? That was the heebie-jeebie planet.

Gimp asked Harv how much leave he had on Earth.

"Not long, I guess," Harv laughed. "I've got to check back at the Force
Hospital in Minneapolis tomorrow..."

But right away it was evident that his thoughts had been put on the
wrong track. His easy smile faded. He gasped and looked kind of
surprised. He hung onto Paul's old swivel chair, in which he was
sitting, as if he was suddenly terribly afraid of falling. His eyes
closed tight, and there was a funny gurgle in his throat.

The Bunch surrounded him, wanting to help, but he half recovered.

"Even a good Space Force bubb, manufactured under rigid government
specifications, can tear," he said in a thick tone. "If some jerk,
horsing around with another craft, bumps you even lightly.
Compartmentation helps, but you can still be unlucky. I was
fortunate--almost buttoned into my Archer Six, already. _But did you
ever see a person slowly swell up and turn purple, with frothy bubbles
forming under the skin, while his blood boils in the Big Vacuum?_ That
was my buddy, Ed Kraft..."

Lieutenant Harvey Diamond gasped. Huge, strangling hiccups came out of
his throat. His eyes went wild. The Kuzaks had to hold him, while Mitch
Storey ran to phone Doc Miller. A shot quieted Diamond somewhat, and an
ambulance took him away.

That incident shook up the Bunch a little. A worse one came on a Tuesday
evening, when not everybody was at the shop.

The TV was on, showing the interior of the _Far Side_, one of those big,
comparatively luxurious tour bubbs that take rubbernecks that can afford
it on a swing around the Moon. The _Far Side_ was just coming into
orbit, where tending skip gliders would take off the passengers for
grounding at the New Mexico spaceport. Aboard the big bubb you could see
people moving about, or sitting with drinks on curved benches. A girl
was playing soft music on a tiny, lightweight piano.

There wasn't any sign of trouble except that the TV channel went dead
for a second, until a stand by commercial with singing cartoon figures
cut in.

But Frank Nelsen somehow put his hands to his head, as if to protect it.

Mitch Storey, with a big piece of stellene in his brown mitts, stood up
very straight.

Gimp, at a bench, handed a tiny capacitor to Eileen, and started
counting, slow and even. "One--two--three--four--five--"

"What's with you slobs?" Jig Hollins wanted to know.

"Dunno--we're nuts, maybe," Gimp answered. "Ten--eleven--twelve--"

Charlie Reynolds and Paul Hendricks were alert, too.

Then a big, white light trembled on the thin snow beyond the windows,
turning the whole night landscape into weird day. The tearing, crackling
roar was delayed. By the time the sound arrived, all of the stellene in
the _Far Side_ must have been consumed. It had no resistance to
atmospheric friction at five miles per second, or faster. There were
just the heavier metallic details left to fall and burn. Far off, there
was a thumping crash that seemed to make the ground sag and recover.

"Here we go!" Charlie Reynolds yelled.

In his and Hollins' cars, they got to the scene of the fragment's fall,
two miles out of town, by following a faint, fading glow. They were
almost the first to reach the spot. Tiflin and Ramos, who had been
working on their jobs, came with their boss, along with a trailing horde
of cars from town.

Flashlights probed into the hot impact pit in the open field, where the
frozen soil had seemed to splash like a liquid. Crumpled in the hole was
a lump of half-fused sheet steel, wadded up like paper. It was probably
part of the _Far Side_'s central hub. Magnesium and aluminum, of which
the major portions had certainly been made, were gone; they could never
have endured the rush through the atmosphere.

Ramos got down into the pit. After a minute, he gave a queer cry, and
climbed out again. His mitten smoked as he opened it, to show something.

"It must have been behind a heavy object," he said very seriously, not
like his usual self at all. "That broke the molecular impact with the
air--like a ceramic nose cone. Kept it from burning up completely."

The thing was a lady's silver compact, from which a large piece had been
fused away. A bobbypin had gotten welded to it.

Old Paul Hendricks cursed. Poor Two-and-Two moved off sickly, with a
palm clamped over his mouth.

Eileen Sands gasped, and seemed about to yell. But she got back most of
her poise. Women have nursed the messily ill and dying, and have tended
ghastly wounds during ages of time. So they know the messier side of
biology as well as men.

Ramos gave the pathetic relic to a cop who was trying to take charge.

"Somebody must have goofed bad on the _Far Side_, for it to miss orbit
like that," Ramos grated. "Or was something wrong, beforehand? Their TV
transmitter went out--we were watching, too, at the garage... You can
see the aurora--the Northern Lights... Those damn solar storms might
have loused up instruments...! But who'll ever know, now...?"

The Kuzaks, who had been to an Athletic Association meeting at Tech, had
grabbed a ride out with the stream of cars from town. Both looked grim.
"No use hanging around here, Charlie," Art urged. "Let's get back to the
shop."

Before he drove off, Jig Hollins tried to chuckle mockingly at
everybody, especially Charlie Reynolds. "Time to think about keeping a
nice safe job in the Jarviston powerhouse--eh, Reynolds? And staying
near granddad?"

"We're supposed not to be children, Hollins," Charlie shot back at him
from his car window. "We're supposed to have known long ago that these
things happen, and to have adjusted ourselves to our chances."

"Ninnies that get scared first thing, when the facts begin to show!"
Tiflin snarled. "Cripes--let's don't be like soft bugs under boards!"

"You're right, Tif," Frank Nelsen agreed, feeling that for once the
ne'er-do-well--the nuisance--might be doing them all some good. Frank
could feel how Tiflin shamed some of the quiver out of his own insides,
and helped bring back pride and strength.

The _Far Side_ disaster had been pretty disturbing, however. And next
day, Thursday, the blue envelopes came to the members of the Bunch. A
printed card with a typed-in date, was inside each: "Report for
space-fitness tests at Space-Medicine Center, February 15th..."

"Just a couple of weeks!" Two-and-Two was moaning that night. "How'll I
get through, with my courses only half-finished. You've gotta help me
some more, people! With that stinking math...!"

So equipment building was almost suspended, while the Bunch crammed and
sweated and griped and cursed. But maybe now some of them wouldn't care
so very much if they flunked.

Two loaded automobiles took off for Minneapolis on the night before the
ordeal. The Bunch put up at motels to be fresh the next morning. Maybe
some of them even slept.

At the Center, there were more forms to fill out. Then complete
physicals started the process. Next came the written part. Right off,
Frank Nelsen knew that this was going a familiar way, which had
happened quite often at Tech: Struggle through a tough course, hear dire
promises of head-cracking questions and math problems in the final quiz.
Then the switch--the easy letdown.

The remainder of the tests proceeded like assembly-line operations, each
person taking each alone, in the order of his casual position in the
waiting line.

First there was the dizzying, mind-blackening centrifuge test, to see if
you could take enough Gs of acceleration, and still be alert enough to
fit a simple block puzzle together.

Then came the free fall test, from the top of a thousand foot tower. A
parachute-arrangement broke your speed at the bottom of the track. As in
the centrifuge, instruments incorporated into the fabric of a coverall
suit with a hood, were recording your emotional and bodily reactions.
The medics wanted to be sure that your panic level was high and cool.
Nelsen didn't find free fall very hard to take, either.

Right after that came the scramble to see how fast you could get into an
Archer, unfold and inflate a bubb and rig its gear.

"That's all, Mister," the observer with the camera told Nelsen in a
bored tone.

"Results will be mailed to your home within twelve hours--Mr. Nelsen," a
girl informed him as she read his name from a printed card.

So the Bunch returned tensely to Jarviston, with more time to sweat out.
Everybody looked at Gimp Hines--and then looked away. Even Jig Hollins
didn't make any comments. Gimp, himself, seemed pretty subdued.

The small, green space-fitness cards were arriving at Jarviston
addresses in the morning.

Near the end of the noon hour, Two-and-Two Baines was waving his around
the Tech campus, having gone home to look, as of course everybody else
who could, had also done. "Cripes!--Hi-di-ho--here it is!" he was
yelling at the frosty sky, when Frank came with his own ticket.

The Kuzaks had theirs, and were calm about it. Eileen Sands' card was
tucked neatly into her sweater pocket, as she joined those who were
waiting for the others on the front steps of Tech's Carver Hall.

Ramos had to make a noise. "See what Santa brought the lady! But he
didn't forget your Uncle Miguel, either--see! We're in, kid--be happy.
Yippee!"

He tried to whirl her in some crazy dance, but Gimp was swinging along
the slushy walk on his crutches. His grin was a mile wide. Mitch Storey
was with him, looking almost as pleased.

"Guess legs don't count, Out There," Gimp was saying. "Or patched
tickers, either, as long as they work good! I kind of figured on it...
Hey--I don't want to ride anybody's shoulders, Ramos--cut it out...! We
won't know about Charlie and Jig till tonight, when they come to Paul's
from their jobs. But I don't think that there's any sweat for them,
either... Only--where's Tif? He should be back by now from where he
lives with his father..."

Tiflin didn't show up at Hendricks' at all that evening, or at his
garage job either. Ramos phoned from the garage to confirm that.

"And he's not at home," Ramos added. "The boss sent me to check. His Old
Man says he doesn't know where Tif is and cares less."

"Just leave Tif be," Mitch Storey said softly.

"Maybe that's best, at that," old Paul growled. "Only I hope the darned
idiot doesn't cook himself up another jam..."

They all knew then, for sure, what had happened. Right now, Glen Tiflin
was wandering alone, somewhere, cursing and suffering. As likely as not,
he'd start hitchhiking across the country, to try to get away from
himself... Somewhere the test instruments--which had seemed so
lenient--had tripped him up, spotting the weakness that he had tried to
fight. Temper, nerves--emotional instability. So there was no green card
for Tif, to whom space was a kind of Nirvana...

The Bunch worked on with their preparations. Things got done all right,
but the fine edge of enthusiasm had dulled. Jig Hollins flung his usual
remarks, with their derisive undertone, around for a couple of weeks.
Then he came into the shop with a girl who had a pretty, rather blank
face, and a mouth that could twist with stubborn anger.

"Meet Minnie," Jig said loudly. "She is one reason why I have decided
that I've had enough of this kid stuff. I gave it a whirl--for kicks.
But who, with any sense, wants to go batting off to Mars or the
Asteroids? That's for the birds, the crackpots. Wife, house, kids--right
in your own home town--that's the only sense there is. Minnie showed me
that, and we're gonna get married!"

The Bunch looked at Jig Hollins. He was swaggering. He was making sour
fun of them, but in his eyes there were other signs, too. A pleading:
Agree with me--back me up--quit! Don't see through me--it's not so,
anyhow! Don't say I'm hiding behind a skirt... Above all, don't call me
yellow! I'm _not_ yellow, I tell you! I'm tough Jig Hollins! You're the
dopes!...

Frank Nelsen spoke for the others. "We understand, Jig. We'll be getting
you a little wedding present. Later on, maybe we'll be able to send you
something really good. Best of luck..."

They let Jig Hollins and his Minnie go. They felt their contempt and
pity, and their lifting, wild pride. Maybe Jig Hollins, wise guy and big
mouth, boosted their own selves quite a bit, by contrast.

"Poor sap," Joe Kuzak breathed. "Who's he kidding--us or himself, or
neither...?"

Soon Eileen began to show symptoms: Sighs. A restlessness. Sudden angry
pouts that would change as quickly to the secret smiles of reverie,
while she hummed a soft tune to herself, and rose on her toes, dancing a
few steps. Speculative looks at Nelsen, or the other guys around her.
Maybe she envied men. Her eyes would narrow thoughtfully for a second.
Then she might look scared and very young, as if her thoughts frightened
her. But the expression of determined planning would return.

After about ten days of this, Gimp asked, "What's with you, Eileen? You
don't usually say much, but now there must be something else."

She tossed down a fistful of waste with which she had been wiping her
hands--she had been cementing segments of the last of the ten bubbs they
would make--more than they needed, now, but spares might be useful.

"Okay, all," she said briskly. "You should hear this, without any
further delay. I'm clearing out, too. Reasons? Well--at least since Tif
flunked his emotional I've been getting the idea that possibly I've been
playing on a third-rate team. No offense, please--I don't really believe
it's so, and if it isn't so you're tough enough not to be hurt. Far
worse--I'm a girl. So why am I trying to do things in a man's way, when
there are means that are made for me? I'm all of twenty-two. I've got
nobody except an aunt in Illinois. Meanwhile, out in New Mexico, there's
a big spaceport, and a lot of the right people who can help me. I'll bet
I can get where you want to go, before you do. Tell Mr. J. John Reynolds
that he can have my equipment--most of which he paid for. But perhaps
I'll still be able to give him his ten percent."

"Eileen! Cripes, what are you talking about?" This was Ramos yelping, as
if the clown could be hurt, after all.

"I don't mean anything so bad, Fun Boy," she said more gently. "Lots of
men are remarkably chivalrous. But no arguments. Now that I have
declared my intentions, I'll pick up and pull out of here this
minute--taking some pleasant memories with me, as well as a
space-fitness card. You're all good, plodding joes--honest. But there'll
be a plane west from Minneapolis tomorrow."

She was getting into her blazer. Even Ramos saw that arguments would be
futile. Frank Nelsen's throat ached suddenly, as if at sins of omission.
But that was wrong. Eileen Sands was too old for him, anyhow.

"So long, you characters," she said. "Good luck. Don't follow me
outside. Maybe I'll see you, someplace."

"Right, Eileen--we'll miss yuh," Storey said. "And we better sure enough
see you that someplace!"

There were ragged shouts. "Good luck, kid. So long, Eileen..."

She was gone--a small, scared, determined figure, dressed like a boy. On
her wrist was a watch that might get pawned for a plane ticket.

Ramos was unbelievably glum for days. But he worked harder building
air-restorers than most of the Bunch had ever worked before. "We're
hardcore, now--we'll last," he would growl. "Final, long lap--March,
April and May--with no more interruptions. In June, when our courses at
Tech are finished, we'll be ready to roll..."

That was about how it turned out. Near the end of May, the Bunch lined
up in the shop, the ten blastoff drums they had made, including two
spares. The drums were just large tubes of sheet magnesium, in which
about everything that each man would need was compactly stowed: Archer
Five, bubb, sun-powered ionic drive motor, air-restorer,
moisture-reclaimer, flasks of oxygen and water, instruments, dehydrated
foods, medicines, a rifle, instruction manuals, a few clothes, and
various small, useful items. Everything was cut to minimum, to keep the
weight down. The lined up drums made a utilitarian display that looked
rather grim.

The gear was set out like this, for the safety inspectors to look at
during the next few days, and provide their stamp of approval.

The blastoff tickets had also been purchased--for June tenth.

"Well, how do you think the Bunch should travel to New Mexico, Paul?"
Frank Nelsen joshed.

"Like other Bunches, I guess," Paul Hendricks laughed. "A couple of
moving vans should do the trick..."




III


On June first, ten days before blastoff, David Lester came back to the
shop, sheepishness, pleasure and worry showing in his face.

"I cleared up matters at home, guys," he said. "And I went to
Minneapolis and obtained one of these." He held up the same kind of
space-fitness card that the others had.

"The tests are mostly passive," he explained further. "Anybody can be
whirled in a centrifuge, or take a fall. That is somewhat simpler, in
its own way, than clinging to a careening motor scooter. Though I do
admit that I was still almost rejected...! So, I'll join you, again--if
I'm permitted? I understand that my old gear has been completed, as a
spare? Paul told me. Of course I'm being crusty, in asking to have it
back, now?"

"Uh-uh, Les--I'm sure that's okay," Ramos grunted. "Right, fellas?"

The others nodded.

A subdued cheerfulness seemed to possess Lester, the mamma's boy, as if
he had eased and become less introverted. The Bunch took him back
readily enough, though with misgivings. Still, the mere fact that a
companion could return, after defeat, helped brace their uncertain
morale.

"I'll order you a blastoff ticket, Les," Frank Nelsen said. "In one of
the two GOs--ground-to-orbit rockets--reserved for us. The space is
still there..."

David Lester had won a battle. He meant to win through, completely.
Perhaps some of this determination was transmitted to the others.
Two-and-Two Baines, for example, seemed more composed.

There wasn't much work to do during those last days, after the equipment
had been inspected and approved, the initials of each man painted in red
on his blastoff drum, and all the necessary documents put in order.

Mitch Storey rode a bus to Mississippi, to say goodbye to his folks. The
Kuzaks flew to Pennsylvania for the same reason. Likewise, Gimp Hines
went by train to Illinois. Ramos rode his scooter all the way down to
East Texas and back, to see his parents and a flock of younger brothers
and sisters. When he returned, he solemnly gave his well-worn vehicle
to an earnest boy still in high school.

"No dough," Ramos said. "I just want her to have a good home."

Those of the Bunch who had families didn't run into any serious last
minute objections from them about their going into space. Blasting out
was getting to be an accepted destiny.

There was a moment of trouble with Two-and-Two Baines about a kid of
eight years named Chippie Potter, who had begun to hang around
Hendricks' just the way Frank Nelsen had done, long ago. But more
especially, the trouble was about Chippie's fox terrier, Blaster.

"The lad of course can't go along with us, Out There, on account of
school and his Mom," Two-and-Two said sentimentally, on one of those
final evenings. "So he figures his mutt should go in his place. Shucks,
maybe he's right! A lady mutt first made it into orbit, ahead of any
people, remember? And we ought to have a mascot. We could make a sealed
air-conditioned box and smuggle old Blaster. Afterwards, he'd be all
right, inside a bubb."

"You try any stunt like that and I'll shoot you," Frank Nelsen promised.
"Things are going to be complicated enough."

"You always tell me no, Frank," Two-and-Two mourned.

"I know something else," said Joe Kuzak--he and his tough twin had
returned to Jarviston by then, as had all the others who had visited
their homes. "There's a desperate individual around, again. Tiflin. He
appealed his test--and lost. Kind of a good guy--someways..."

The big Kuzaks, usually easy and steady and not too comical, both had a
certain kind of expression, now--like amused and secretive gorillas.
Frank wasn't sure whether he got the meaning of this or not, but right
then he felt sort of sympathetic to Tiflin, too.

"I didn't hear anything; I won't say or do anything," he laughed.

Afterwards, under the pressure of events, he forgot the whole matter.

It would take about thirty-six hours to get to the New Mexico spaceport.
Calculating accordingly, the Bunch hoisted their gear aboard two
canvas-covered trucks parked in the driveway beside Hendricks', just
before sundown of their last day in Jarviston.

People had begun to gather, to see them off. Two-and-Two's folks, a
solid, chunky couple, looking grave. David Lester's mother, of course,
seeming younger than the Bunch remembered her. Make-up brought back some
of her good-looks. She was more Spartan than they had thought, too.

"I have made up a basket of sandwiches for you and your comrades,
Lester," she said.

Otto Kramer was out with free hotdogs, beer and Pepsi, his face sad. J.
John Reynolds, backer of the Bunch, had promised to come down, later.
Chief of Police, Bill Hobard, was there, looking grim, as if he was half
glad and half sorry to lose this passel of law-abiding but worrisome
young eccentrics. There were various cynical and curious loafers around,
too. There were Chippie Potter and his mutt--a more wistful and
worshipping pair would have been hard to imagine.

Sophia Jameson, one of Charlie Reynolds' old flames, was there. Charlie
had sold his car and given away his wardrobe, but he still managed to
look good in a utilitarian white coverall.

"Well, we had a lot of laughs, anyway, you big ape!" Sophia was saying
to Charlie, when Roy Harder, the mailman with broken-down feet, shuffled
up, puffing.

"One for you, Reynolds," he said. "Also one for you, Nelsen. They just
came--ordinarily I wouldn't deliver them till tomorrow morning. But you
see how it is."

A long, white envelope was in Frank Nelsen's hands. In its upper
left-hand corner was engraved:

                 UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE
                 RECRUITING SECTION
                 WASHINGTON, D.C.

"Jeez, Frankie--Charlie--you made it--open 'em, quick!" Two-and-Two
said.

Frank was about to do so. But everybody knew exactly what was inside
such an envelope--the only thing that was ever so enclosed, unless you
were already in the Force. An official summons to report, on such and
such a date and such and such a place, for examination.

For a minute Frank Nelsen suffered the awful anguish of indecision over
a joke of circumstance. Like most of the others, he had tried to get
into the Force. He had given it up as hopeless. Now, when he was ready
to move out on his own, the chance came. Exquisite irony.

Frank felt the lift of maybe being one of--well--the Chosen. To wear the
red, black and silver rocket emblem, to use the finest equipment, to
carry out dangerous missions, to exercise authority in space, and yet to
be pampered, as those who make a mark in life are pampered.

"_Que milagro!_--holy cow!" Ramos breathed.
"Charlie--Frankie--congratulations!"

Frank saw the awed faces around them. They were looking up to him and
Charlie in a friendly way, but already he felt that he had kind of lost
them by being a little luckier. Or was this all goof ball sentiment in
his own mind, to make himself feel real modest?

So maybe he got sentimental about this impoverished, ragtag Bunch that,
even considering J. John Reynolds' help, still were pulling themselves
up into space almost literally by their own bootstraps. He had always
belonged to the Bunch, and he still did. So perhaps he just got sore.

Charlie's and his eyes met for a second, in understanding.

"Thanks, Postman Roy," Charlie said. "Only you were right the first
time. These letters shouldn't be delivered until your next trip around,
tomorrow morning."

They both handed the envelopes back to Roy Harder.

The voices of their Bunch-mates jangled in a conflicting chorus.

"Ah--yuh damfools!" Two-and-Two bleated.

"Good for them!" Art Kuzak said, perhaps mockingly.

"Hey--they're us--they'll stay with us--shut up--didn't we lose enough
people, already?" Gimp said.

Frank grinned with half of his mouth. "We always needed a name," he
remarked. "How about _The Planet Strappers_? Hell--if the chairborne
echelon of the U.S.S.F. is so slow and picky, let 'em go sit on a
sunspot."

"I need some white paint and a brush, Paul," Ramos declared, running
into the shop.

In a couple of minutes more, the name for the Bunch was crudely and
boldly lettered on the sides of both trucks.

"Salute your ladies, shake hands with your neighbors, and then let's get
moving," Charlie Reynolds laughed genially.

And so they did. Old Paul Hendricks, born too soon, blinked a little as
he grinned, and slapped shoulders. "On your way, you lucky tramps...!"

There were quick movements here and there--a kiss, a touch of hands, a
small gesture, a strained glance.

Frank Nelsen blew a kiss jauntily to Nance Codiss, the neighbor girl,
who waved to him from the background. "So long, Frank..." He wondered if
he saw a fierce envy showing in her face.

Miss Rosalie Parks, his high school Latin teacher, was there, too. Old
J. John Reynolds appeared at the final moment to smile dryly and to flap
a waxy hand.

"So long, sir... Thanks..." they all shouted as the diesels of the
trucks whirred and then roared. J. John still had never been around the
shop. It was only Frank who had seen him regularly, every week. It might
have been impertinent for them to say that they'd make him really rich.
But some must have hoped that they'd get rich, themselves.

Frank Nelsen was perched on his neatly packed blastoff drum in the back
of one of the trucks, as big tires began to turn. Near him, similarly
perched, were Mitch Storey, dark and thoughtful, Gimp Hines with a
triumph in his face, Two-and-Two Baines biting his lip, and Dave Lester
with his large Adam's apple bobbing.

So that was how the Bunch left Jarviston, on a June evening that smelled
of fresh-cut hay and car fumes--home. Perhaps they had chosen this hour
to go because the gathering darkness might soften their haunting
suspicions of complete folly before an adventure so different from the
life they knew--neat streets, houses, beds, Saturday nights, dances,
struggling for a dream at Hendricks'--that even if they survived the
change, the difference must seem a little like death.

Seeking the lifting thread of magical romance again, Frank Nelsen looked
up at the ribbed canvas top of the truck. "Covered wagon," he said.

"Sure--Indians--boom-boom," Two-and-Two chuckled, brightening. "Wild
West... Yeah--_wild_--that's a word I kind of like."

Up ahead, in the other truck, Ramos and Charlie Reynolds had begun to
sing a funny and considerably ribald song. They made lots of lusty,
primitive noise. When they were finished, Ramos, still in a spirit of
humor, corned up an old Mexican number about disappointed love.

_"Adios, Mujer--

Adios para siempre--

Adios..."_

Ramos wailed out the last syllable with lugubrious emphasis.

"Always it's girls," Dave Lester managed to chuckle. "I still don't see
how they expect to find many, Out There."

"If our Eileen has--or will--make it, she won't be the first--or last,"
Frank offered, almost mystically.

"Hey--I was right about the word, _wild_," Two-and-Two mused.
"Yeah--we're all just plum-full of wanting to be wild. Not _mean_ wild,
mostly--constructive wild, instead. And, damn, we'll _do_ it...!
Cripes--we ought to come back to old Paul's place in June, ten years
from now, and tell each other what we've accomplished."

"Damn--that's a fine idea, Two-and-Two!" David Lester piped up. "I'll
suggest it to the other guys, first chance I get...!"

Of course it was another piece of callow whistling in the dark, but it
was a buildup, too. Coming home at a fixed, future time, to compare
glittering successes. Eldorados found and exploited, cities built, giant
businesses established, hearts won, real manhood achieved past
staggering difficulties. But they all had to believe it, to combat the
icy sliver of dread concerning an event that was getting very near, now.

Mitch Storey sat with his mouth organ cupped in his hands. He began to
make soft, musing chords, tried a fragment of Old Man River, shifted
briefly to a spiritual, and wound up with some eerie, impromptu
fragments, partly like the drums and jingling brass of old Africa,
partly like a joyful battle, partly like a lonesome lament, and then,
mysteriously like absolute silence.

Storey stopped, abashed. He grinned.

"Reaching for Out There, Mitch?" Frank Nelsen asked. "Music of your own,
to tell about space? Got any words for it?"

"Nope," Mitch said. "Maybe it shouldn't have any words. Anyhow, the tune
doesn't come clear, yet. I haven't been--There."

"Maybe some more of Otto's beer will help," Frank suggested. "Here--one
can, each, to begin." For once, Frank had an urge to get slightly
pie-eyed.

"High's a good word," he amended. "High and sky! Mars and stars!"

"Space and race, nuts and guts!" Lester put in, trying to belong, and be
light-minded, like he thought the others were, instead of a scared,
pedantic kid. He slapped the blastoff drum under him, familiarly, as if
to draw confidence from its grim, cool lines.

The whole Bunch was quite a bit like that, for a good part of the night,
shouting lustily back and forth between the two trucks, laughing,
singing, wise-cracking, drinking up Otto Kramer's Pepsi and beer.

But at last, Gimp Hines, remembering wisdom, spoke up. "We're supposed
to be under mild sedation--a devil-killer, a tranquilizer--for at least
thirty hours. It's in the rules for prospective ground-to-orbit
candidates. We're supposed to be sleeping good. Here goes my pill--down,
with the last of my beer..."

Faces sobered, and became strained and careful, again. The guys on the
trucks bedded down as best they could, among their gaunt equipment. Soon
there were troubled snores from huddled figures that quivered with the
motion of the vehicles. The mottled Moon rode high. Big tires whispered
on damp concrete. Lights blinked past. The trucks curved around corners,
growled up grades, highballed down. There were pauses at all-night
drive-ins, coffees misguidedly drunk in a blurred, fur-tongued half
wakefulness that seemed utterly bleak. Oh, hell, Frank Nelsen thought,
wasn't it far better to be home in bed, like Jig Hollins?

At grey dawn, there was a breakfast stop, the two truck drivers and
their relief man grinning cynically at the Bunch. Then there was more
country, rolling and speeding past. Wakefulness was half sleep, and
vice-versa. And the hours, through the day and another night, dwindled
toward blastoff time, at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.

When the second dawn came, the Bunch were all tautly and wearily alert
again, peering ahead, across dun desert. There wasn't much fallout from
the carefully developed hydrogen-fusion engines of the GO rockets, but
maybe there was enough to distort the genes of the cacti a little,
making their forms more grotesque.

Along the highway there were arrows and signs. When the trucks had
labored to the top of a ridge, the spaceport installations came into
view all at once:

Barbed-wire fences, low, olive-drab gate buildings, guidance tower, the
magnesium dome of a powerhouse reactor, repair and maintenance shops,
personnel-housing area carefully shielded against radiation by a huge
stellene bubble, sealed and air-conditioned, with double-doored
entrances and exits. Inside it were visible neat bungalows, lawns,
gardens, supermarket, swimming pools, swings, a kid's bike left casually
here or there.

The first sunshine glinted on the two rockets and their single,
attendant gantry tower, waiting on the launching pad. The rockets were
as gaunt as sharks. They might almost have been natural spires on the
Moon, or ruined towers left by the extinct beings of Mars. At first they
were impersonal and expected parts of the scene, until the numbers,
ceramic-enamelled on their striped flanks, were noticed: GO-11 and
GO-12.

"They're us--up the old roller coaster!" Charlie Reynolds shouted.

Then everybody was checking his blastoff ticket, as if he didn't
remember the number primly typed on it. Frank Nelsen had GO-12.
GO--Ground-to-Orbit. But it might as well mean go! glory, or gallows, he
thought.

The trucks reached the gate. The Bunch met the bored and cynical
reception committee--a half-dozen U.S.S.F. men in radiation coveralls.

Each of the Bunch held his blastoff ticket, his space-fitness and his
equipment-inspection cards meekly in sweaty fingers. It was an old
story--the unknowing standing vulnerable before the knowing and perhaps
harsh.

Nelsen guessed at some of the significance of the looks they all
received: Another batch of greenhorns--to conquer and develop and
populate the extra-terrestrial regions. They all come the same way, and
look alike. Poor saps...

Frank Nelsen longed to paste somebody, even in the absence of absolute
impoliteness.

The blastoff drums were already being lifted off the trucks, weighed,
screened electronically, and moved toward a loading elevator on a
conveyor. The whole process was automatic.

"Nine men--ten drums--how come?" one of the U.S.S.F. people inquired.

"A spare. Its GO carriage charge is paid," Reynolds answered.

He got an amused and tired smirk. "Okay, Sexy--it's all right with us.
And I hope you fellas were smart enough not to eat any breakfast. Of
course we'd like to have you say--tentatively--where you'll be headed,
on your own power, after we toss you Upstairs. Toward the Moon, huh,
like most fledglings say? It helps a little to know. Some new folks
start to scream and get lost, up there. See how it is?"

"Sure--we see--thanks. Yes--the Moon." This was still Charlie Reynolds
talking.

"No problem, then, Sexy. We mean to be gentle. Now let's move along, in
line. Never mind consulting wristwatches--we've got over four hours
left. Final blood pressure check, first. Then the shot, the
devil-killer, the wit-sharpener. And try to remember some of what you're
supposed to have learned. Relax, don't talk too much, and try not to
swallow any live butterflies."

The physician, looking them over, shook his head and made a wry face of
infinite sadness, when he came to Gimp and Lester, but he offered no
comment except a helpless shrug.

The U.S.S.F. spokesman was still with them. "All right--armor up. Let's
see how good you are at it."

They scrambled to it grimly, and still a little clumsily. Gimp Hines
had, of course, long ago tailored his Archer to fit that shrunken right
leg. Then they just sat around in the big locker room, trying to get
used to being enclosed like this, much of the time, checking to see that
everything was functioning right, listening to the muffled voices that
still reached them from beyond their protecting encasement. They could
still have conversed, by direct sound or by helmet-radio, but the
devil-killer seemed to subdue the impulse, and for a while caused a
dreaminess that shortened the long wait...

"Okay--time to move!"

Heavy with their Archies, they filed out into desert sun-glare that
their darkened helmets made feeble. They arose in the long climb of the
gantry elevator and split into two groups, for the two rockets,
according to their GO numbers. It didn't seem to matter, now, who went
with whom. Each man had his own private sweating party. The padded
passenger compartments were above the blastoff drum freight sections.

"Helmets secure? Air-restorer systems on? Phones working? Answer roll
call if you hear me. Baines, George?"

"Here!" Two-and-Two responded, loud and plain in Frank Nelsen's phone,
from the other rocket.

"Hines, Walter?"

One by one the names were called... "Kuzak, Arthur?... Kuzak,
Joseph?..."

"Okay--the Mystic Nine, eh? Lash down!"

They lay on their backs on the padded floors, and fastened the straps.
Gimp Hines, next to Frank, seemed to have discarded his crutches,
somewhere.

The inspector swaggered around among them, jerking straps, and tapping
shoulders and buttocks straight on the floor padding with a boot toe.

"All right--not good, not too bad. Ease off--shut your eyes, maybe. The
next twenty minutes are ours. The rest are yours, except for orders. I
hope you remember your jump procedures. Also that there are a lot of
wooden nickels Upstairs--in orbit, on the Moon, anyplace. We'll call
some of your shots from the ground. Good luck--and Glory help you..."

The growl in their phones died away with the muffled footsteps. Doors
closed on their gaskets and were dogged, automatically.

Then it was like waiting five minutes more, inside a cannon barrel.
There was a buzzing whisper of nuclear exciters. The roar of power cut
in. A soft lurch told that the rockets were off the ground--fireborne.
The pressure of acceleration mounted. You closed your eyes to make the
blackness seem natural, instead of a blackout in your optic nerves, and
the threadiness of your mind seem like sleep. But you felt smothered,
just the same. Somebody grunted. Somebody gave a thick cry.

Frank Nelsen had the strange thought that, by his body's mounting
velocity, enough kinetic energy was being pumped into it to burn it to
vapor in an instant, if it ever hit the air. But it was the energy of
freedom from gravity, from the Earth, from home--_for_ adventure.
Freedom to wander the solar system, at last! He tried, still, to believe
in the magnificence of it, as the thrust of rocket power ended, and the
weightlessness of orbital flight came dizzily.

He didn't consciously hear the order to leave the orbiting GO-12, which
was moving only about five hundred feet from it's companion, GO-11. But,
like most of the others, he worked his way with dogged purpose through
what seemed a fuzzy nightmare.

The doors of the passenger compartments had opened; likewise the
blastoff drums had been ejected automatically, and were orbiting free.

Maybe it was Gimp who moved ahead of him. Looking out, Frank saw what
was certainly Ramos, already straddling a drum marked with a huge red
M.R., riding it like a jaunty troll on a seahorse. He saw the Kuzaks
dive for their initialled drums, big men not yet as apt in this new game
as in football, but grimly determined to learn fast. The motion was all
as silent as a shadow.

Then Frank jumped for his own drum, and found himself turning slowly
end-over-end, seeing first the pearl-mist curve that was the Earth, then
the brown-black, chalk-smeared sky, with the bright needle points and
the corona-winged sun in it. Instinct made him grab futilely outward,
for the sense of weightlessness was the same as endless fall. He _was_
falling, around the Earth, his forward motion exactly balancing his
downward motion, in a locked ellipse, a closed trajectory.

His mind cleared very fast--that must have been another phase of the
devil-killer shot coming into action. Controlling panic, he relocated
his drum, marked by a splashed red F.N., set his tiny shoulder ionic in
operation, and reached back to move its flexible guide, first to stop
his spin, then to produce forward motion. He got to the drum, and just
clung to it for a moment.

But in the next instant he was looking into the embarrassed, anguished
face of a person, who, like a drowning man, had come to hang onto it for
dear life, too.

"Frank, I--I even dirtied myself..."

"So what? Over there is your gear, Two-and-Two--go get it!" Frank
shouted into his phone, the receiver of which was now full of sounds--a
moaning grunt, a vast hiccuping, shouts, exhortations.

"Easy, Les," Reynolds was saying. "Can you reach a pill from the rack
inside your chest plate, and swallow it? Just float quietly--nothing'll
happen. We've got work to do for a few minutes... We'll look after you
later... Cripes, Mitch--he can't take it. Jab the knockout needle right
through the sleeve of his Archer, like we read in the manuals. The
interwall gum will seal the puncture..."

Just then the order came, maddeningly calm and hard above the other
sounds in Frank's phone: "All novices disembarked from GOs-11 and -12
must clear four-hundred mile take-off orbital zone for other traffic
within two hours."

At once Frank was furiously busy, working the darkened stellene of his
bubb from the drum, letting it spread like a long wisp of silvery cobweb
against the stars, letting it inflate from the air-flasks to a firm and
beautiful circle, attaching the rigging, the fine, radial
spokewires--for which the blastoff drum itself now formed the hub. To
the latter he now attached his full-size, sun-powered ionic motor. Then
he crept through the double sealing flaps of the airlock, to install the
air-restorer and the moisture-reclaimer in the circular, tunnel-like
interior that would now be his habitation.

He wasn't racing anything except time, but he had worked as fast as he
could. Still, Gimp Hines had finished rigging his bubb, minutes ahead of
Frank, or anybody else. On second thought, maybe this was natural
enough. Here, where there was no weight, his useless leg made no
difference--as the space-fitness examiners must have known. Besides,
Gimp had talented fingers and a keen mechanical sense, and had always
tried harder than anybody.

Ramos was almost as quick. Frank wasn't much farther behind. The Kuzaks
were likewise doing all right. Two-and-Two was trailing some, but not
very badly.

"Spin 'em!" Gimp shouted. "Don't forget to spin 'em for
centrifuge-gravity and stability!"

And so they did, each gripping the rigging at their bubb rims, and using
the minute but accumulative thrust of the shoulder ionics of their
Archers, to provide the push. The inflated rings turned like wheels with
perfect bearings. In the all but frictionless void, they could go on
turning for decades, without additional impetus.

"We've made it--we're Out Here--we're all right!" Ramos was shouting
with a fierce exultation.

"Shut up, Ramos!" Frank Nelsen yelled back. "Don't ever say that, too
soon. Look around you!"

Storey and Reynolds were still struggling with their bubbs. They had
been delayed by trying to quiet Dave Lester, who now floated in a
drugged stupor, lashed to his blastoff drum.

Slowly, pushed by their shoulder ionics, Gimp, Ramos and Frank Nelsen
drifted over to see what they could do for Lester.

He was vaguely conscious, his eyes were glassy, his mouth drooled watery
vomit.

"What do you want us to do, Les?" Frank asked gently. "We could put you
back in one of the rockets. You'd be brought back to the spaceport, when
they are guided back by remote control."

"I don't know!" Lester wailed in a hoarse voice. "Fellas--I don't know!
A little falling is all right... But it goes on all the time. I can't
stand it! But if I'm sent back--I can't ever live with myself!..."

Frank felt the intense anguish of trying to decide somebody else's
quandary that might be a life or death matter which would surely involve
them all. Damn, weak-kneed kid! How had he ever gotten so far?

"We should have set up his bubb first, put him inside, and spun it to
kill that sense of fall!" Gimp said. "We'll do it, now! He should be all
right. He _did_ pass his space-fitness tests, and the experts ought to
know."

With the three of them at it, and with the Kuzaks joining them in a
moment, the job was quickly finished.

Meanwhile, the sharp, commanding voice of Ground Control sounded in
their phones, again: "GOs-11 and -12 returning to port. Is all in order
among delivered passengers? Sound out if true. Baines, George?..."

David Lester's name was called just before Frank Nelsen's, and he
managed to say, "In order!" almost firmly, creating a damnable illusion,
Frank thought. But for a moment, mixed with his anger, Frank felt a
strange, almost paternal gentleness, too.

At the end of the roll call, the doors of the GO rockets closed. Stubby
wings, useful for the ticklish operation of skip-glide deceleration and
re-entry into the atmosphere, slid out of their sheaths. Little, lateral
jets turned the vehicles around. Their main engines flamed lightly;
losing speed, they dipped in their paths, beginning to fall.

Watching the rockets leave created a tingling sense of being left all
alone, at an empty, breathless height from which you could never get
down--a height full of dazzling, unnatural sunshine, that in moments
would become the dreadful darkness of Earth's shadow.

"Hey--our spare drum--it'll drift off!" Ramos shouted.

The Kuzaks dived to retrieve the cylinder. Others followed. But there
was a peculiar circumstance. The friction cover at one of its ends hung
open. There was a trailing wisp of stellene--part of the bubb packed
inside--and a thin, angry face with rather hysterical eyes, within the
helmet of an Archer Five.

"Shhh--it ain't safe for me to come out yet," Glen Tiflin hissed
threateningly. "Damn you all--if you dare queer me...!"

"Cripes--another Jonah!" Charlie Reynolds growled.

Frank Nelsen looked at the Kuzaks, floating near.

"Well--what could we do?" Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, whispered. "He
came back to Jarviston, to our rooming house, one night. We promised to
help him a little. What are you going to do with a character nuts enough
about space to armor up and stuff himself inside a blastoff drum? Of
course he didn't come that way from home. There's that electronic check
of drum contents at the gate of the port. But he was there on a
visitor's pass, waiting--having hitchhiked all the way to here. After
the electronic check, he figured on stowing away, while the drums were
waiting to be loaded. The only thing we did to help was to take a little
of the stuff out of the spare drum and stow it in our two drums, to
leave him some room. We thought sure he'd be caught, quick. But you can
see how he got away with it. Those U.S.S.F. boys at the port don't
really give a damn who gets Out Here."

"Okay--I'll buy it," Reynolds sighed heavily. "Good luck with the stunt,
Tif."

Tiflin only gave him a poisonous glare, as the nine fragile, gleaming
rings, the drifting men and the spare drum, orbited on into the Earth's
shadow, not nearly as dark as it might have been because the Moon was
brilliant.

"We'd better rig the parabolic mirrors of the ionics to catch the first
sunshine in about forty minutes, so we can start moving out of orbit,"
Ramos said. "We'll have to think of food, sometime, too."

"Food, yet--ugh!" Art Kuzak grunted.

Frank felt the fingers of spasm taking hold of his stomach. Most
everybody was getting fall-sick, now, their insides not finding any up
or down direction. But the guys wavered back to their bubbs. The
shoulder ionics of their Archers, though normally sun-energized, could
draw power from the small nuclear batteries of the armor during the rare
moments when there could be darkness anywhere in solar space.

The Planet Strappers stood in the rigging of their fragile vehicles,
setting the full-sized ionics to produce increased acceleration which
would gradually push the craft beyond orbit. Joe Kuzak ran a steel wire
from a pivot bolt at the hub of his ring, to tow Tiflin and his drum.

Then everybody crawled into their respective bubbs, most of them needing
the centrifugal gravity to help straighten out their fall-sickness.

"My neck is swelling, too," Frank Nelsen heard Charlie Reynolds say.
"Lymphatic glands sometimes bog down in the absence of weight. Don't
worry if it happens to some of you. We know that it straightens out."

For a few minutes it seemed that they had a small respite in their
struggle for adjustment to a fantastic environment.

"Well--I got cleaned up, some--that's better," Two-and-Two said. "But
look at the fuzzy lights down on Earth. Hell, is it right for a fella to
be looking down on the lights of Paris, Moscow, Cairo, and Rangoon--when
he hasn't ever been any farther than Minneapolis?" Two-and-Two sounded
fabulously befuddled.

David Lester started screaming again. They had left him alone and
apparently unconscious, inside his ring, because all ionics, including
his, had had to be set. Then, in the pressure of events, they had almost
forgotten him.

"I'll go look," Frank Nelsen said.

Mitch Storey was there ahead of him. Mitch's helmet was off; his dark
face was all planes and hollows in the moonlight coming through the
thin, transparent walls of the vehicle. "Should we call the U.S.S.F.
patrol, Frank?" he asked anxiously. "Have them take him off? 'Cause he
sure can't stand another devil-killer."

"We'd better," Frank answered quickly.

But now Tiflin, having deserted his blastoff drum, was coming through
the airlock flaps, too. He stepped forward gingerly, along the spinning,
ring-shaped tunnel.

"Poor bookworm," he growled in a tone curiously soft for Glen Tiflin.
"Think I don't understand how it is? And how do you know if he _wants_
to get sent back?"

Mitch had removed Lester's helmet, too. Tiflin knelt. His arm moved with
savage quickness. There was the crack of knuckles, in a rubberized
steel-fabric space glove, against Lester's jaw. His hysterical eyes
glazed and closed; his face relaxed.

For a second of intolerable fury, Frank wanted to tear Tiflin apart.

But Mitch half-grinned. "That might be an answer," he said.

They plopped where they were, and tried to rest until the orbiting
cluster of rings emerged from Earth's shadow into blazing sunshine,
again. Then Mitch and Frank returned to their own bubbs to check on the
acceleration.

It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's drum, would
lag.

"Hell!" Art Kuzak snapped. "Get that character out here to help us
inflate and rig his own equipment! We did enough for him! So if the
Force notices that there are ten bubbs instead of nine, the extra is
still just our spare... Hey--Tiflin!"

"Nuts--I'm looking after Pantywaist," Tiflin growled back.

"Awright," Art returned. "So we just cast your junk adrift! Come on,
boy!" There was no kidding in the dry tone.

Tiflin snarled but obeyed.

Ions jetting from the Earthward hub-ends of the rotating rings, yielded
their steady few pounds of thrust. The gradual outward spiral began.

"Cripes--I'm not sure I can even astrogate to the Moon," Two-and-Two was
heard to complain.

"I'll check your ionic setting for you, Two-and-Two," Gimp answered him.
"After that the acceleration should continue properly without much
attention. So how about you and me taking first watch, while the others
ease off a little...?"

Frank Nelsen crept carefully back into his own rotating ring, still half
afraid that an armored knee or elbow might go right through the thin,
yielding stellene. Prone, and with his helmet still sealed, he slipped
into the fog which the tranquilizer now induced in his brain, while the
universe of stars, Moon, sun and Earth tumbled regularly around him.

He dreamed of yelling in endless fall, and of climbing over metal-veined
chunks of a broken world, where once there had been air, sea, desert and
forest, and minds not unlike those of men, but in bodies that were far
different. Gurgling thickly, he awoke, and snapped on his helmet phone
to kill the utter silence.

Someone muttered a prayer in a foreign tongue:

"... _Nuestra Dama de Guadalupe--te pido, por favor... Tengo miedo_--I'm
scared... _Pero pienso mas en ella_--I think more of her. _Mi chula, mi
linda_... My beautiful Eileen... Keep her--"

The prayer broke off, as if a switch was turned. It had been brash
Ramos... Now there were only some fragments of harmonica music...

Frank slipped into the blur, again, awakening at last with Two-and-Two
shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie--we're five hours out, by the
chronometers--look how small the Earth has got...! We're all gonna have
brunch in Ramos' vehicle... Know what that goof ball Mex was doing,
before? Stripped down to his shorts, and with the spin stopped for
zero-G, he was bouncing back and forth from wall to wall inside his
bubb! The sun makes it nice and warm in there. Think I might try it,
myself, sometime. Shucks, I feel pretty good, now... Frankie, ain't you
hungry?"

Frank felt limp as a rag, but he felt much better than before, and he
could stand some nourishment. "Lead on, Two-and-Two," he said.

Ramos' bubb was spinning once more, but he was wearing just dungarees.
The Bunch--the Planet Strappers--with only their helmets off, were
crouched, evenly spaced, around the circular interior of the ring. Dave
Lester was there, too--staring, but fairly calm, now. In this curious
place, there was a delicious and improbable aroma of coffee--cooked by
mirror-reflected sunlight on a tiny solar stove.

"So that's the way it goes," Charlie Reynolds commented profoundly. "We
reach out for strangeness. Then we try to make it as familiar as home."

"Stew, warmed in the cans, too," Ramos declared. "Enough for a light
one-time-around. I brought the stew along. Hope you birds remember.
Then we're back on dehydrates. Hell, except for that weight problem and
consequent cost of stuff from Earth, we'd have it made, Out Here. The
Big Vacuum ain't so tough--no storms in it, even, to tear our bubbs
apart. I guess we won't ever have a bigger adventure than finding out
for ourselves that we can get along with space."

"If we had a beef roast, we'd put it in a sealed container of clear
plastic," Gimp laughed. "Set it turning, outside the bubb, on a swiveled
tether wire. It would rotate for hours like on a spit--almost no
friction. Rig some mirrors to concentrate the sun's heat. Space Force
men do things like that."

"Shut up--I'm getting _hong_-gry!" Art Kuzak roared.

Ramos poured the coffee in the thin magnesium cups that each of the
Bunch had brought. Their squeeze bottles, for zero-G drinking, were not
necessary, here. Their skimpy portions of stew were spooned on magnesium
plates. Knife and fork combinations were brought out. An apple purée
which had been powder, followed the stew. Brunch was soon over.

"That's all for now, folks," Ramos said ruefully.

Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his Archer.

"Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't you ask our
host, first?"

Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's okay," he said.
"The air-restorers are new."

But Tiflin's explosive nerves, under strain for a long time, didn't take
it. He threw down the unlighted fag. He snicked his switch blade from a
thigh pocket. For an instant it seemed that he would attack Reynolds.
Then the knife flew, and penetrated the thin, taut wall, to its handle.
There was a frightening hiss, until the sealing gum between the double
layers, cut off the leak.

The Kuzaks had Tiflin helpless and snarling, at once.

"Get a patch, somebody--fix up the hole," Joe, the mild one, growled.
"Tiflin--me and my brother helped you. Now we're gonna sit on you--just
to make sure your funny business doesn't kill us all. Try anything just
_once_, and we'll feed you all that vacuum--without an Archer. If you're
a good boy, maybe you'll live to get dumped on the Moon as we pass by."

"Nuts--let's give this sick rat to the Space Force right now." Art Kuzak
hissed. "Here comes their patrol bubb."

The glinting, transparent ring with the barred white star was passing at
a distance.

"All is well with you novices?" The enquiring voice was a gruff drawl,
mingled with crunching sounds of eating--perhaps a candy bar.

"No!" Tiflin whispered, pleading. "I'll watch myself!"

The United Nations patrol was out, too, farther off. Another, darker
bubb, with other markings, passed by, quite close. It had foreign lines,
more than a bit sinister to the Bunch's first, startled view. It was a
Tovie vehicle, representing the other side of the still--for the most
part--passively opposed forces, on Earth, and far beyond. But through
the darkened transparency of stellene, the armored figures--again
somewhat sinister--only raised their hands in greeting.

In a minute, Frank Nelsen emerged from Ramos' ring. Floating free, he
stabilized himself, fussed with the radio antenna of his helmet-phone
for a moment, making its transmission and reception directional. On the
misty, shrinking Earth, North America was visible.

"Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks," he said. "Frank Nelsen to Paul
Hendricks..."

Paul was waiting, all right. "Hello, Frankie. Some of the guys talked
already--said you were asleep."

"Hi, Paul--yeah! Terra still looks big and beautiful. We're okay.
Amazing, isn't it, how just a few watts of power, beamed out in a thin
thread, will reach this far, and lots farther? Hey--will you open and
shut your front door? Let's hear the old customer's bell jingle... Best
to you, to J. John, to Nance Codiss, Miss Parks--everybody..."

The squeak of hinges and the jingling came through, clear and
nostalgically.

"Come on, Frank," Two-and-Two urged. "Other guys would like to talk to
Paul... Hey, Paul--maybe you could get my folks down to the store to say
hello to me on your transmitter. And I guess Les would appreciate it if
you got his mother..."

When the talk got private, Frank went to Mitch Storey's bubb.

"I wanted to show you," Mitch said. "I brought seeds, and these little
plastic tubes with holes in them, that you can string around inside a
bubb. The weight is next to nothing. Put the seeds in the tubes, and
water with plant food in solution. The plants come up through the holes.
Hydroponics. Gotta almost do it, if I'm going way out to Mars without
much supplies. Maybe, before I get there, I'll have even ripe tomatoes!
'Cause, with sun all the time, the stuff grows like fury, they say. I'll
have string beans and onions and flowers, anyhow! Helps keep the air
oxygen-fresh, too. Wish I had a few bumble bees! 'Cause now I'll have to
pollenate by hand..."

Nope--Mitch couldn't get away from vegetation, even in space.

The Planet Strappers soon established a routine for their journey out as
far as the Moon. There were watches, to be sure that none of the bubbs
veered, while somebody was asleep or inattentive. Always at hand were
loaded rifles, because you never knew what kind of space-soured men--who
might once have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays
with their families--might be around, even here.

Neither Kuzak slept, if the other wasn't awake. They were watching
Tiflin, whose bubb rode a little ahead of the others. He was ostracized,
more or less.

Everybody took to Ramos' kind of exercise, bouncing around inside a
bubb--even Lester, who was calmer, now, but obviously strained by the
vast novelty and uncertainty ahead.

"I gave you guys a hard time--I'm sorry," he apologized. "But I hope
there won't be any more of that. The Bunch will be breaking up, soon, I
guess--going here and there. And if I get a job at Serenitatis Base, I
think I'll be okay."

Frank Nelsen hoped that he could escape any further part of Lester, but
he wasn't sure that he had the guts to desert him.

It wasn't long before the ionics were shut off. Enough velocity had been
attained. Soon, the thrust would be needed in reverse, for braking
action, near the end of the sixty hour journey into a circumlunar orbit.

Sleep was a fitful, dream-haunted thing. Food was now mostly a kind of
gruel, rich in starches, proteins, fats and vitamins--each meal
differently flavored, up to the number of ten flavors, in a
manufacturer's attempt to mask the sameness. Add water to a powder--heat
and eat. The spaceman's usual diet, while afield...

One of the functions of the moisture-reclaimers was a rough joke, or a
squeamishness. A man's kidneys and bowels functioned, and precious water
molecules couldn't be wasted, here in the dehydrated emptiness. But what
difference did it really make, after the sanitary distillation of a
reclaimer? Accept, adjust...

Decision about employment or activity in the immediate future, was one
thing that couldn't be dismissed. And announcements, beamed from the
Moon, emphasized it:

"Serenitatis Base, seventeenth month-day, sixteenth hour. (There was a
chime) Lunar Projects Placement is here to serve you. Plastics-chemists,
hydroponics specialists, machinists, mechanics, metallurgists, miners,
helpers--all are urgently needed. The tax-free pay will startle you.
Free subsistence and quarters. Here at Serene, at Tycho Station or at a
dozen other expanding sites..."

Charlie Reynolds sat with Frank Nelsen while he listened. "The lady has
a swell voice," said Charlie. "Otherwise, it _sounds_ good, too. But I'm
one that's going farther. To Venus--just being explored. All fresh, and
no man-made booby traps, at least. Maybe they'll even figure out a way
to make it rotate faster, give it a reasonably short day, and a
breathable atmosphere--make a warmer second Earth out of it...
Sometimes, when you jump farther, you jump over a lot of trouble. Better
than going slow, with the faint-hearts. Their muddling misfortunes begin
to stick to you. I'd rather be Mitch, headed for heebie-jeebie Mars, or
the Kuzaks, aiming for the crazy Asteroid Belt."

That was Charlie, talking to him--Frank Nelsen--like an older brother.
It made a sharp doubt in him, again. But then he grinned.

"Maybe I am a slow starter," he said. "The Moon is near and humble, but
some say it's good training--even harsher than space. And I don't want
to bypass and miss anything. Oh, hell, Charlie--I'll get farther, soon,
too! But I really don't even know what I'll do, yet. Got to wait and see
how the cards fall..."

Several hours before the rest of the Bunch curved into a slow orbit a
thousand miles above the Moon, Glen Tiflin set the ionic of his bubb for
full acceleration, and arced away, outward, perhaps toward the Belt.

"So long, all you dumb slobs!" his voice hissed in their helmet-phones.
"Now I get really lost! If you ever cross my path again, watch your
heads..."

Art Kuzak's flare of anger died. "Good riddance," he breathed. "How long
will he last, alone? Without a space-fitness card, the poor idiot
probably imagines himself a big, dangerous renegade, already."

Joe Kuzak's answering tone almost had a shrug in it. "Don't jinx our
luck, twin brother," he said. "For that matter, how long will _we_
last...? Mex, did you toss Tiflin back his shiv?"

"A couple of hours ago," Ramos answered mildly.

Everybody was looking down at the Moon, whose crater-pocked ugliness and
beauty was sparsely dotted with the blue spots of stellene domes, many
of them housing embryo enterprises that were trying to beat the blastoff
cost of necessities brought from Earth, and to supply spacemen and
colonists with their needs, cheaply.

The nine fragile rings were soon in orbit. One worker-recruiting rocket
and several trader-rockets--much less powerful than those needed to
achieve orbit around Earth--because lunar gravity was only one-sixth of
the terrestrial--were floating in their midst. On the Moon it had of
course been known that a fresh Bunch was on the way. Even telescopes
could have spotted them farther off than the distance of their 240,000
mile leap.

Frank Nelsen's tongue tasted of brassy doubt. He didn't know where he'd
be, or what luck, good or bad, he might run into, within the next hour.

The Kuzaks were palavering with the occupants of two heavily-loaded
trader rockets. "Sure we'll buy--if the price is right," Art was saying.
"Flasks of water and oxygen, medicines, rolls of stellene. Spare parts
for Archies, ionics, air-restorers. Food, clothes--anything we can sell,
ourselves..."

The Kuzaks must have at least a few thousand dollars, which they had
probably managed to borrow when they had gone home to Pennsylvania to
say goodbye.

Out here, free of the grip of any large sphere, there was hardly a limit
to the load which their ionics could eventually accelerate sufficiently
to travel tremendous distances. Streamlining, in the vacuum, of course
wasn't necessary, either.

Now a small, sharp-featured man in an Archie, drifted close to Ramos and
Frank, as they floated near their bubbs. "Hello, Ramos, hello, Nelsen,"
he said. "Yes--we know your names. We investigate, beforehand, down on
terra firma. We even have people to snap photographs--often you don't
even notice. We like guys with talent who get out here by their own
efforts. Shows they got guts--seriousness! But now you've arrived. We
are Lunar Projects Placement. We need mechanics, process technicians,
administrative personnel--anything you can name, almost. Any bright lad
with drive enough to learn fast, suits us fine. Five hundred bucks an
Earth-week, to start, meals and lodging thrown in. Quit any time you
want. Plenty of different working sites. Mines, refineries, factories,
construction..."

"Serenitatis Base?" Ramos asked almost too quickly, Frank thought. And
he sounded curiously serious. Was this the Ramos who should be going a
lot farther than the Moon, anyway?

"Hell, yes, fella!" said the job scout.

"Then I'll sign."

"Excellent... You, too, guy?" The scout was looking at Frank. "And your
other friends?"

"I'm thinking about it," Frank answered cagily. "Some of them aren't
stopping on the Moon, as you can see."

Mitch Storey was lashing a few flasks of oxygen and water to the rim of
his bubb, being careful to space them evenly for static balance. He
didn't have the money to buy much more, even here.

The Kuzaks were preparing two huge bundles of supplies, which they
intended to tow. Reynolds was also loading up a few things, with
Two-and-Two helping him.

"I'm all set, Frank!" Two-and-Two shouted. "I'm going along with
Charlie, maybe to crash the Venus exploration party!"

"Good!" Frank shouted back, glad that this large, unsure person had
found himself a leader.

Now he looked at Gimp Hines, riding the spinning rim of his ring with
his good and bad leg dangling, an expectant, quizzical, half-worried
look on his freckled face.

But Dave Lester was more pathetic. He had stopped the rotation of his
bubb. He looked down first at the pitted, jagged face of the Moon, with
an expression in which rapture and terror may have been mingled, glanced
with the hope of desperation toward the job scout, and then distractedly
continued dismantling the rigging of his vehicle, as if to repack it in
the blastoff drum for a landing.

"Hey--hold on, Les!" Two-and-Two shouted. "You gotta know where you're
going, first!"

"Make up your mind, Nelsen," said the job scout, getting impatient. "We
handle just about everything lunar--except in the Tovie areas. Without
us, you're just a lost, fresh punk!"

But another man had approached from another lunar GO rocket, which had
just appeared. He had a thin intellectual face, dark eyes, trap mouth,
white hair, soft speech that was almost shy.

"I'm Xavier Rodan," he said. "I search out my own employees. I do
minerals survey--for gypsum, bauxite--anything. And site survey, for
factories and other future developments. I also have connections with
the Selenographic Institute of the University of Chicago. It is all
interesting work, but in a rather remote region, I'm afraid--the far
side of the Moon. And I can pay only three hundred a week. Of course you
can resign whenever you wish. Perhaps you'd be interested--Mr. Nelsen,
is it?"

Frank had an impulse to jump at the chance--though there was a warning
coming to him from somewhere. But how could you ever know? You would
always have to go down to that devils' wilderness to find out.

"I'll try it, Mr. Rodan," he said.

"Selenography--that's one of my favorite subjects, sir!" David Lester
burst out, making a gingerly leap across the horrible void of spherical
sky--stars in all directions except where the Moon's bulk hung. "Could
I--too?" His trembling mouth looked desperate.

"Very well, boy," Rodan said at last. "A hundred dollars for a week's
work period."

Frank was glad that Lester had a place to go--and furious that he would
probably have to nursemaid him, after all.

Gimp Hines kept riding the rim of his ring like a merry-go-round, his
face trying to show casual humor and indifference over ruefulness and
scare. "Nobody wants me," he said cheerfully. "It's just prejudice and
poor imagination. Well--I don't think I'll even try to prove how good I
am. Of course I could shoot for the asteroids. But I'd like to look
around Serenitatis Base--some, anyway. Will fifty bucks get me and my
rig down?"

"Talk to our pilot, Lame Fella," said the job scout. "But you must be
suicidal nuts to be around here at all."

The others leapt to help Nelsen, Ramos, Gimp and Lester strip and pack
their gear. Ramos' and Gimp's drums were loaded into the job scout's
rocket. Nelsen's and Lester's went into Rodan's.

Gloved hands clasped gloved hands all around. The Bunch, the Planet
Strappers, were breaking up.

"So long, you characters--see you around," said Art Kuzak. "It won't be
ten years, before you all wind up in the Belt."

"Bring back the Mystery of Mars, Mitch!" Frank was saying.

"When you get finished Mooning, come to Venus, Lover Lad," Reynolds told
Ramos. "But good luck!"

"Jeez--I'm gonna get sentimental," Two-and-Two moaned. "Luck everybody.
Come on, Charlie--let's roll! I don't want to slobber!"

"I'll catch up with you all--watch!" Gimp promised.

"So long, Frank..."

"Yeah--over the Milky Way, Frankie!"

"_Hasta luego_, Gang." This was all Ramos, the big mouth, had to say. He
wasn't glum, exactly. But he was sort of preoccupied and impatient.

The five remaining rings--a wonderful sight, Frank thought--began to
move out of orbit. Ships with sails set for far ports. No--mere ships of
the sea were nothing, anymore. But would all of the Bunch survive?

Charlie Reynolds, the cool one, the most likely to succeed, waved
jauntily and carelessly from his rotating, accelerating ring.
Two-and-Two wagged both arms stiffly from his.

Mitch Storey's bubb, lightest loaded, was jumping ahead. But you could
hear him playing _Old Man River_ on his mouth organ, inside his helmet.

The Kuzaks' bubbs, towing massive loads, were accelerating slowest, with
the ex-gridiron twins riding the rigging. But their rings would dwindle
to star specks before long, too.

The job scout's rocket, carrying Ramos and Gimp, began to flame for a
landing at Serene.

In the airtight cabin of Xavier Rodan's vehicle, Frank Nelsen and David
Lester had read and signed their contracts and had received their
copies.

Rodan didn't smile. "Now we'll go down and have a look at the place I'm
investigating," he said.




IV


Frank Nelsen's view of empire-building on the Moon was brief, all
encompassing, and far too sketchy to be very satisfying, as
Rodan--turned about in his universal-gimbaled pilot seat--spiralled his
battered rocket down backwards, with the small nuclear jets firing
forward in jerky, tooth-cracking bursts, to check speed further.

It was necessary to go around the abortive sub-planet that had always
accompanied the Earth, almost once, to reduce velocity enough for a
landing.

Thus, Nelsen glimpsed much territory--the splashed, irregular shape of
Serenitatis, the international base on the mare, the dust sea of the
same name; the radiating threads of trails and embryo highways, the
ever-widening separation of isolated domes and scattered human diggings
and workings faintly scratched in the lunar crust, as, at a still great
height, Frank's gaze swept outward from the greatest center of human
endeavor on the Moon.

It was much the same around Tycho Station, except that this base was
smaller, and was built in a great, white-rayed crater, whose walls were
pierced by tunnels for exit and entry.

The Tovie camp, glimpsed later, and only at the distant horizon, seemed
not very different from the others, except for the misleading patterns
of camouflage. That the Tovies should have an exclusive center of their
own was not even legal, according to U.N. agreements. But facts were
facts, and what did anyone do about them?

Frank was not very concerned with such issues just then, for there was
an impression that was overpowering: The slightness of the intrusion of
his kind on a two thousand-something miles-in-diameter globe of
incredible desert, overlapping ring-walls, craters centered in radiating
streaks of white ash, mountain ranges that sank gradually into dust,
which once, two billion years ago, after probable ejection from
volcanoes, had no doubt floated in a then palpable atmosphere. But now,
to a lone man down there, they would be bleak plains stretching to a
disconcertingly near horizon.

Frank Nelsen's view was one of fascination, behind which was the chilly
thought: This is my choice; here is where I will have to live for a
short while that can seem ages. Space looks tame, now. Can I make it all
right? Worse--_how about Lester?_

Frank looked around him. Like Rodan, Lester and he had both pivoted
around in their gimbaled seats--to which they had safety-strapped
themselves--to face the now forward-pointing stern jets.

Rodan, looking more trap-mouthed than before, had said nothing further
as he guided the craft gingerly lower. Lester was biting his heavy lip.
His narrow chin trembled.

A faint whisper had begun. As far back as the 1940s, astronomers had
begun to suspect that the Moon was, after all, not entirely airless.
There would be traces of heavy gases--argon, neon, xenon, krypton, and
volcanic carbon dioxide. It would be expanded far upward above the
surface, because the feeble lunar gravity could not give it sufficient
weight to compress it very much. So it would thin out much less rapidly
with altitude than does the terrestrial atmosphere. From a density of
perhaps 1/12,000th of Earth's sea level norm at the Moon's surface, it
would thin to perhaps 1/20,000th at a height of eighty miles, being thus
roughly equivalent in density to Earth's gaseous envelope at the same
level! And at this height was the terrestrial zone where meteors flare!

This theory about the lunar atmosphere had proven to be correct. The
tiny density was still sufficient to give the Moon almost as effective
an atmospheric meteor screen as the Earth's. The relatively low velocity
needed to maintain vehicles in circumlunar orbits, made its danger to
such vehicles small. It could help reduce speed for a landing; it caused
that innocuous hiss of passage. But it could sometimes be treacherous.

Frank thought of these things as the long minutes dragged. Perhaps
Rodan, hunched intently over his controls, had reason enough, there, to
be silent...

The actual landing still had to be made in the only way possible on
worlds whose air-covering was so close to a complete vacuum as
this--like a cat climbing down a tree backwards. With flaming jets still
holding it up, and spinning gyros keeping it vertical, the rocket
lowered gradually. The seats swung level, keeping their occupants right
side up. There was a hovering pause, then the faint jolt of contact. The
jet growl stopped; complete silence closed in like a hammer blow.

"Do you men know where you are?" Rodan asked after a moment.

"At the edge of Mare Nova, I think," Frank answered, his eyes combing
the demons' landscape beyond the thick, darkened glass of the cabin's
ports.

The dazzling sun was low--early morning of two weeks of daylight. The
shadows were long, black shafts.

"Yes--there's Tower Rock," Lester quavered. "And the Arabian Range going
down under the dust of the plain."

"Correct," Rodan answered. "We're well over the rim of the Far Side.
You'll never see the Earth from here. The nearest settlement is eight
hundred miles away, and it's Tovie at that. This is a really remote
spot, as I intimated before."

He paused, as if to let this significant information be appreciated. "So
that's settled," he went on. "Now I'll enlighten you about what else you
need to know... Come along."

Frank Nelsen felt the dust crunch under the rubberized boot-soles of his
Archer. There was a brief walk, then a pause.

Rodan pointed to a pit dynamited out of the dust and lava rock, and to
small piles of greyish material beside six-inch borings rectangularly
spaced over a wide area.

"There is an extensive underlying layer of gypsum, here," he said. "The
water-bearing rock. A mile away there's an ample deposit of
graphite--carbon. Thus, there exists a complete local source of
hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, ideal for synthesizing various
hydrocarbonic chemicals or making complicated polyethylene materials
such as stellene, so useful in space. Lead, too, is not very far off.
Silicon is, of course, available everywhere. There'll be a plant
belonging to Hoffman Chemicals here, before too long. I was prospecting
for them, for a site like this. Actually I was very lucky, locating this
spot almost right away--which is fortunate. They think I'm still
looking, and aren't concerned..."

Rodan was quiet for a moment before continuing. The pupils of his eyes
dilated and contracted strangely.

"Because I found something else," he went on. "It was luck beyond
dreams, and it must be my very own. I intend to investigate it
thoroughly, even if it takes years! Come along, again!"

This time the walk was about three hundred yards, past three small
stellene domes, the parabolic mirrors of a solar-power plant, a
sun-energized tractor, and onward almost to the mountain wall, imbedded
in the dust of the mare. There Frank noticed a circular, glassy area.

Strips of magnesium were laid like bridging planks across chunks of
lava, and in the dust all around were countless curious scrabbled marks.

Rodan stood carefully on a magnesium strip, and looked back at Nelsen
and Lester, his brows crinkling as if he was suspicious that he had
already told them too much. Frank Nelsen became more aware of the heavy
automatic pistol at Rodan's hip, and felt a tingling urge to get away
from here and from this man--as if a vast mistake had been made.

"It is necessary for you to be informed about _some_ matters," Rodan
said slowly. "For instance, unless it is otherwise disturbed, a
footprint, or the like, will endure for millions of years on the
Moon--as surely as if impressed in granite--because there is no weather
left to rub it out. You will be working here. I am preserving some of
these markings. So please walk on these strips, which Dutch and I have
laid down."

Rodan indicated a large, Archer-clad man, who also carried an automatic.
He had the face of a playful but dangerous mastiff. He was hunkered down
in a shallow pit, scanning the ground with a watch-sized device probably
intended for locating objects hidden just beneath the surface,
electronically. Beside him was a screen-bottomed container, no doubt
meant for sifting dust.

"Greetings, Novices!" he gruffed with genial contempt. But his pale
eyes, beyond the curve of his helmet, had a masked puzzlement, as if
something from the lunar desolation had gotten into his brain, leaving
the realization of where he was, permanently not altogether clear to
him.

Rodan pulled a shiny object from his thigh pouch, and held it out in a
gloved palm for his new employees to peer at.

"One of the things we found," he remarked. "Incomplete. If we could, for
instance, locate the other parts..."

Frank saw a little cylinder, with grey coils wrapped inside it--a power
chamber, perhaps, to be lined with magnetic force, the only thing that
could contain what amounted to a tiny twenty-million degree piece of a
star's hot heart. It was a familiar principle for releasing and managing
nuclear power. But the device, perhaps part of a small weapon, was
subtly marked by the differences of another technology.

"I believe I have said enough," Rodan stated with a thin smile. "Though
some facts will be unavoidably obvious to you, working here. But at
least I will let you figure them out for yourselves, since you are
well-informed young men, by your own statement." Here Rodan looked hard
at the pale, unsteady Lester. "We will go back, now, so I can show you
the camp, its routine, and your place in it. We have three domes--garden
and living quarters, with a workshop and supply dome between them..."

Quarters proved to be okay--two bunks and the usual compact accessories.

"Leave your Archers in the lockers outside your door--here are your
keys," Rodan suggested. "Helen will have a meal ready for you in the
adjacent dining room. Afterwards, take a helpful tranquilizer, and
sleep. No work until you awaken. I shall leave you, now..."

It was a good meal--steak cultured and grown in a nourishing solution,
on the Moon, perhaps at Serene, much as Dr. Alexis Carrel had long ago
grown and kept for years a living fragment of a chicken's heart.
Potatoes, peas and tomatoes, too--all had become common staples in
hydroponic gardens off the Earth.

"What do you make of what Rodan was talking about, Les?" Frank asked
conversationally.

But David Lester was lost and vague, his food almost untouched. "I--I
don't know!" he stammered.

Scared and embittered further by this bad sign, Frank turned to Helen.
"And how are you?" he asked hopefully.

"I am all right," she answered, without a trace of encouragement.

She was in jeans, maybe she was eighteen, maybe she was Rodan's
daughter. Her face was as reddened as a peasant's. It was hard to tell
that she was a girl at all. She wasn't a girl. It was soon plain that
she was a zombie with about ten words in her vocabulary. How could a
girl have gotten to this impossible region, anyway?

Now Frank tried to delay Lester's inevitable complete crackup by
encouraging his interest in their situation.

"It's big, Les," he said. "It's got to be! An expedition came here to
investigate the Moon--it couldn't be any more recently than sixty
million years ago, if it was from as close as Mars, or the Asteroid
Planet! Two adjacent worlds were competing, then, the scientists know.
Both were smaller than the Earth, cooled faster, bore life sooner. Which
sent the party? I saw where there rocket ship must have stood--a glassy,
spot where the dust was once fused!... From all the markings, they must
have been around for months. Nowhere else on the Moon--that I ever heard
of--is there anything similar left. So maybe they did most of their
survey work by gliding, somehow, above the ground, not disturbing the
dust... I think the little indentations we saw look Martian. That would
be a break! Mars still has weather. Archeological objects wouldn't stay
new there for millions of years, but here they would! Rodan is
right--he's got something that'll make him famous!"

"Yes--I think I'll have a devil-killer and hit the sack, Frank," Lester
said.

"Oh--all right," Frank agreed wearily. "Me, likewise."

Frank awoke naturally from a dreamless slumber. After a breakfast of
eggs that had been a powder, Lester and he were at the diggings,
sifting dust for the dropped and discarded items of an alien visitation.

Thus Frank's job began. In the excitement of a hunt, as if for ancient
treasure, for a long time, through many ten hour shifts, Frank Nelsen
found a perhaps unfortunate Lethe of forgetfulness for his worries, and
for the mind-poisoning effects of the silence and desolation in this
remote part of the Moon.

They found things, thinly scattered in the ten acre area that Rodan
meant tediously to sift. The screws and nuts, bright and new, were
almost Earthly. But would anyone ever know what the little plastic rings
were for? Or the sticks of cellulose, or the curved, wire device with
fuzz at the ends? But then, would an off-Earth being ever guess the use
of--say--a toothbrush or a bobbypin?

The metal cylinders, neatly cut open, might have contained food--dried
leaf-like dregs still remained inside. There were small bottles made of
pearly glass, too--empty except for gummy traces. They were stoppered
with a stuff like rubber. There were also crumpled scraps, like paper or
cellophane, most of them marked with designs or symbols.

After ten Earth-days, in the lunar afternoon, Frank found the grave. He
shouted as his brushing hands uncovered a glassy, flexible surface.

Rodan took charge at once. "Back!" he commanded. Then he was avidly busy
in the pit, working as carefully as a fine jeweller. He cleared more
dust away, not with a trowel, not with his gloved fingers, but with a
little nylon brush.

The thing was like a seven-pointed star, four feet across. And was the
ripped, transparent casing of its body and limbs another version of a
vacuum armor? The material resembled stellene. As in an Archer, there
were metal details, mechanical, electronic, and perhaps nuclear.

In the punctured covering, the corpse was dry, of course--stomach, brain
sac, rough, pitted skin, terminal tendrils--some coarse, some fine,
almost, as thread, for doing the most delicate work, half out of
protecting sheaths at the ends of its arms or legs.

In the armor, the being must have walked like a toe dancer, on metal
spikes. Or it might even have rolled like a wheel. The bluish tint of
its crusty body had half-faded to tan. Perhaps no one would ever explain
the gaping wound that must have killed the creature, unless it had been
a rock fall.

"Martian!" Lester gasped. "At least we know that they were like this!"

"Yes," Rodan agreed softly. "_I'll_ look after _this_ find."

Moving very carefully, even in the weak lunar gravity, he picked up the
product of another evolution and bore it away to the shop dome.

Frank was furious. This was his discovery, and he was not even allowed
to examine it.

Still, something warned him not to argue. In a little while, his
treasure hunter's eagerness came back, holding out through most of that
protracted lunar night, when they worked their ten hour periods with
electric lamps attached to their shoulders.

But gradually Frank began to emerge from his single line of attention.
Knowing that Lester must soon collapse, and waiting tensely for it to
happen, was part of the cause. But there was much more. There was the
fact that direct radio communication with the Earth, around the curve of
the Moon, was impossible--the Tovies didn't like radio-relay orbiters,
useful for beamed, short-wave messages. They had destroyed the few
unmanned ones that had been put up.

There were the several times when he had casually sent a slender beam of
radio energy groping out toward Mars and the Asteroid Belt, trying to
call Storey or the Kuzaks, and had received no answer. Well, this was
not remarkable. Those regions were enormous beyond imagining; you had to
pinpoint your thread of tiny energy almost precisely.

But once, for an instant, while at work, he heard a voice which could be
Mitch Storey's, call "Frank! Frankie!" in his helmet phone. There was no
chance for him to get an instrument-fix on the direction of the incoming
waves. And of course his name, Frank, was a common one. But an immediate
attempt to beam Mars--yellow in the black sky--and its vicinity,
produced no result.

His trapped feeling increased, and nostalgia began to bore into him. He
had memories of lost sounds. Rodan tried to combat the thick silence
with taped popular music, broadcast on very low power from a field set
at the diggings. But the girl voices, singing richly, only made matters
worse for Frank Nelsen. And other memories piled up on him: Jarviston,
Minnesota. Wind. Hay smell, car smell. Home... Cripes...! Damn...!

Lester's habit of muttering unintelligibly to himself was much worse,
now. Frank was expecting him to start screaming at any minute. Frank
hadn't tried to talk to him much, and Lester, more introverted than
ever, was no starter of conversations.

But now, at the sunrise--S.O.B., was it possible that they had been here
almost a month?--Frank at the diggings, indulged in some muttering,
himself.

"Are you all right, Frank?" Lester asked mildly.

"Not altogether!" Frank Nelsen snapped dryly. "How about you?"

"Oh, I believe I'm okay at last," Lester replied with startling
brightness. "I was afraid I wouldn't be. I guess I had an inferiority
complex, and there was also something to live up to. You see, my dad was
here with the original Clifford expedition. We always agreed that I
should become a space-scientist, too. Mom went along with that--until
Dad was killed, here... Well, I'm over the hump, now. You see, I'm so
interested in everything around me, that the desolation has a cushion of
romance that protects me. I don't see just the bleakness. I imagine the
Moon as it once was, with volcanoes spitting, and with thundrous sounds
in its steamy atmosphere. I see it when the Martians were here--they
surely visited Earth, too, though there all evidence weathered away. I
even see the Moon as it is, now, noticing details that are easy to
miss--the little balls of ash that got stuck together by raindrops, two
billion years ago. And the pulpy, hard-shelled plants that you can still
find, alive, if you know where to look. There are some up on the ridge,
where I often go, when offshift. Carbon dioxide and a little water vapor
must still come out of the deep crack there... Anyhow, they used to say
that a lonesome person--with perhaps a touch of schizophrenia--might do
better off the Earth than the more usual types."

Frank Nelsen was surprised as much by this open, self-analytical
explanation, and the clearing up of the family history behind him, as by
the miracle that had happened. Cripes, was it possible that, in his own
way, Lester was more rugged than anybody else of the old Bunch? Of
course even Lester was somewhat in wonder, himself, and had to talk it
all out to somebody.

"Good for you, Les," Nelsen enthused, relieved. "Only--well, skip it,
for now."

Two work periods later, he approached Rodan. "It will take months to
sift all this dust," he said. "I may not want to stay that long."

The pupils of Rodan's eyes flickered again. "Oh?" he said. "Per
contract, you can quit anytime. But I provide no transportation. Do you
want to walk eight hundred miles--to a Tovie station? On the Moon it is
difficult to keep hired help. So one must rely on practical
counter-circumstances. Besides, I wouldn't want you to be at Serenitatis
Base, or anywhere else, talking about my discovery, Nelsen. I'm afraid
you're stuck."

Now Nelsen had the result of his perhaps incautious test statement. He
knew that he was trapped by a dangerous tyrant, such as might spring up
in any new, lawless country.

"It was just a thought, sir," he said, being as placating as he dared,
and controlling his rising fury.

For there was something that hardened too quickly in Rodan. He had the
fame-and-glory bug, and could be savage about it. If you wanted to get
away, you had to scheme by yourself. There wasn't only Rodan to get
past; there was Dutch, the big ape with the dangling pistol.

Nelsen decided to work quietly, as before, for a while... There were a
few more significant finds--what might have been a nuclear-operated
clock, broken, of course, and some diamond drill bits. Though the long
lunar day dragged intolerably, there was the paradox of time seeming to
escape, too. Daylight ended with the sunset. Two weeks of darkness was
no period for any moves. At sunup, a second month was almost finished!
And ten acres of dust was less than half-sifted...

In the shop and supply dome, David Lester had been chemically analyzing
the dregs of various Martian containers for Rodan. In spare moments he
classified those scarce and incredibly hardy lunar growths that he found
in the foothills of the Arabian Range. Some had hard, bright-green
tendrils, that during daylight, opened out of woody shells full of
spongy hollows as an insulation against the fearsome cold of night. Some
were so small that they could only be seen under a microscope. Frank's
interest, here, however, palled quickly. And Lester, in his mumbling,
studious preoccupation, was no companionable antidote for loneliness.

Frank tried a new approach on Helen, who really was Rodan's daughter.

"Do you like poetry, Helen? I used to memorize Keats, Frost,
Shakespeare."

They were there in the dining room. She brightened a little. "I
remember--some."

"Do you remember clouds, the sound of water? Trees, grass...?"

She actually smiled, wistfully. "Yes. Sunday afternoons. A blue dress.
My mother when she was alive... A dog I had, once..."

Helen Rodan wasn't quite a zombie, after all. Maybe he could win her
confidence, if he went slow...

But twenty hours later, at the diggings, when Dutch stumbled over
Frank's sifter, she reverted. "I'll learn you to leave junk in my way,
you greenhorn squirt!" Dutch shouted. Then he tossed Frank thirty feet.
Frank came back, kicked him in his thinly armored stomach, knocked him
down, and tried to get his gun. But Dutch grabbed him in those big arms.
Helen was also pointing a small pistol at him.

She was trembling. "Dad will handle this," she said.

Rodan came over. "You don't have much choice, do you, Nelsen?" he
sneered. "However, perhaps Dutch was crude. I apologize for him. And I
will deduct a hundred dollars from his pay, and give it to you."

"Much obliged," Frank said dryly.

After that, everything happened to build his tensions to the breaking
point.

At a work period's end, near the lunar noon, he heard a voice in his
helmet-phone. "Frank--this is Two-and-Two...! Why don't you ever call or
answer...?"

Two-and-Two's usually plaintive voice had a special quality, as if he
was maybe in trouble. This time, Frank got a directional fix, adjusted
his antenna, and called, "Hey, Two-and-Two...! Hey, Pal--it's me--Frank
Nelsen...!"

Venus was in the sky, not too close to the sun. But still, though Nelsen
called repeatedly, there was no reply.

He got back to quarters, and looked over not only his radio but his
entire Archer. The radio had been fiddled with, delicately; it would
still work, but not in a narrow enough beam to reach millions of miles,
or even five hundred. An intricate focusing device had been removed from
a wave guide.

That wasn't the worst that was wrong with the Archer. The small nuclear
battery which energized the moisture-reclaimer, the heating units, and
especially the air-restorer--not only for turning its pumps but for
providing the intense internal illumination necessary to promote the
release of oxygen in the photosynthetic process of the chlorophane when
there was no sun--had been replaced by a chemical battery of a far
smaller active life-span! The armor locker! Rodan had extra keys, and
could tamper and make replacements, any time he considered it necessary.

Lester had wandered afield, somewhere. When he showed up, Nelsen jarred
him out of his studious preoccupations long enough for them both to
examine his armor. Same, identical story.

"Rodan made sure," Frank gruffed. "That S.O.B. put us on a real short
tether!"

David Lester looked frightened for a minute. Then he seemed to ease.

"Maybe it doesn't make any difference," he said. "Though I'd like to
call my mother... But I'm doing things that I like. After a while, when
the job is finished, he'll let us go."

"Yeah?" Frank breathed.

There was the big question. Nelsen figured that an old, corny pattern
stuck out all over Rodan. Personal glory emphasized to a point where it
got beyond sense. And wouldn't that unreason be more likely to get worse
in the terrible lunar desert than it ever would on Earth?

Would Rodan ever release them? Wouldn't he fear encroachment on his
archeological success, even after all his data had been made public?
This was all surmise-prediction, of course, but his extreme precautions,
already taken, did not look good. On the Moon there could easily be an
arranged accident, killing Lester, and him--Frank Nelsen--and maybe even
Dutch. Rodan's pupils had that nervous way of expanding and contracting
rapidly, too. Nelsen figured that he might be reading the signs somewhat
warpedly himself. Still...?

At the end of another shift, Nelsen took a walk, farther than ever
before, up through a twisted pass that penetrated to the other side of
the Arabian Mountains. He still had that much freedom. He wanted to
think things out. In bitter, frustrating reversal of all his former
urges to get off the Earth, he wanted, like a desperate weakling, to be
back home.

Up beyond the Arabians, he saw the tread marks of a small tractor
vehicle in a patch of dust. There was a single boot print. A short
distance farther on, there was another. He examined them with a
quizzical excitement. But there weren't any more. For miles, ahead and
behind, unimpressable lava rock extended.

Another curious thing happened, only minutes later. A thousand miles
overhead, out of reach of his sabotaged transmitter, one of those around
the Moon tour bubbs, like the unfortunate _Far Side_, was passing. He
heard the program they were broadcasting. A male voice crooned out what
must be a new, popular song. He had heard so few new songs.

"Serene...

Found a queen...

And her name is Eileen..."

Nelsen's reaction wasn't even a thought, at first; it was only an eerie
tingle in all his flesh. Then, realizing what his suspicion was, he
listened further, with all his nerves taut. But no explanation of the
song's origin was given... He even tried futilely to radio the pleasure
bubb, full of Earth tourists. In minutes it had sunk behind the abrupt
horizon, leaving him with his unanswered wonder.

Girls, he thought, in the midst of his utter solitude. All girls, to
love and have ... Eileen? Cripes, could it be little old Eileen Sands,
up on her ballet-dancing toes, sometimes, at Hendricks', and humming
herself a tune? Eileen who had deserted the Bunch, meaning to approach
space in a feminine way? Holy cow, had even _she_ gotten _that_ far, so
fast?

Suddenly the possibility became a symbol of what the others of the
Bunch must be accomplishing, while here he was, trapped, stuck futilely,
inside a few bleak square miles on the far side of Earth's own
satellite!

So here was another force of Frank Nelsen's desperation.

He made up his mind--which perhaps just then was a bit mad.

With outward calm he returned to camp, slept, worked, slept and worked
again. He decided that there was no help to be had from Lester, who was
still no man of action. Better to work alone, anyway.

Fortunately, on the Moon, it was easy to call deadly forces to one's
aid. Something as simple as possible, the trick should be. Of course all
he wanted to do was to get the upper hand on Rodan and Dutch, take over
the camp, get the missing parts of his radio and Archer, borrow the
solar tractor, and get out of here. To Serenitatis Base--Serene.

His only preparation was to sharpen the edges of a diamond-shaped trowel
used at the diggings, with a piece of pumice. Then he waited.

Opportunity came near sundown, after a shift. Rodan, 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.

Nelsen saw Rodan and Dutch unlatch 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. Nelsen 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. Rodan and Dutch were a good ten feet away from him--he
was out of their reach.

With the harmless-looking trowel held like a dagger, he struck with all
his might at the stellene 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 Rodan's and Dutch's hands moved in
life-saving instinct to reseal their collars, Frank Nelsen leaped, and
then kicked twice, as hard as he could, in rapid succession. At Dutch's
stomach, first. Then Rodan's.

They were down--safe from death, since they had managed to re-latch
their collars. But with a cold fury that had learned to take no chances
with defeat, Nelsen 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 Rodan. "You won't get
anything that is mine!" he heard Rodan grunt.

Frank managed to deflect the automatic's muzzle from himself. But Rodan
moved it downward purposefully, lined it up on a box marked dynamite,
and fired.

Nelsen must have thrown himself prone at the last instant, before the
ticklish explosive blew. He saw the flash and felt the dazing 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 quarters domes were also
shredded and swept away.

Dazed, Nelsen still got Rodan's automatic, picked himself up, saw that
Dutch and Rodan, in armor, too, had apparently suffered from the
explosion no worse than had he. He glanced at the hole in the lava rock,
still smoking in the high vacuum. Most of the force of 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.

Rodan and Dutch were pretty well knocked out from Frank Nelsen's
footwork. Now Dave Lester and Helen Rodan 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 stellene, he tied Dutch's arms behind his back, and
lashed his feet together. Then he pulled Helen away from Rodan.

"Hold her, Les," 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 Rodan or anybody else doing
any more cockeyed things to screw matters up even worse than they are."

Nelsen trussed Rodan up, too, then searched Rodan's thigh pouch and
found a bunch of keys.

"You come along with me, Les and 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 Rodan had
removed a vital part from the nuclear exciters of the motors. His and
Lester's blastoff drums were still in the freight compartment, but the
ionics and air-restorers had been similarly rendered unworkable. Their
oxygen and water flasks were gone. Only their bubbs 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 thermocouple units. It was clear that,
with paranoid thoroughness, Rodan 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 plain, Nelsen 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 Rodan and Dutch, he examined their Archers through their
servicing ports. Rodan's was as the manufacturer intended it. But
Dutch's was jimmied the same as his and Lester's.

Nelsen swung Helen around to face him, and unlatched a port at her
Archer's shoulder.

"He put even you on a short string, 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.

Nelsen 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. "Toward the Tovie 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 Rodan and Dutch had come to. Rodan said nothing. His look was pure
poison.

Dutch sneered. "Smart damn kid you are, huh, Nelsen? _You think!_ Wait
till you and your mumblin' 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 Nelsen untied Rodan'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,
across 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 Rodan 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? Nelsen
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.
Rodan, 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... Nobel 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 squirt's crackin' 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 insulation of the Archers,
and power couldn't be wasted on the heating coils.

Worst was the need for rest. They all lay down at last, except Frank
Nelsen, 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 Nelsen 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 Nelsen, would-be Planet Strapper from Jarviston,
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 in 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 raucously one of those improvised doggerel songs
of spacemen and Moonmen... Folklore, almost...

"If this goddam dust

Just holds its crust,

I'll get on to hell

If my gear don't bust..."

"Hey!" Nelsen 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, Nelsen seemed to be goaded on by imps to crawl, in
infinite weariness, through a hot steel pipe, to face Old Nick
himself--or was it somebody he'd 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 taut stellene roof of a Moontent.

"Sure Frankie--me, Gimp Hines, the itinerant trader 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. Les 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
to Serene, I could have convinced them I was worth a job. But I'm
independent. I hocked 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
travelling. 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 grav? You still hop
along, even when you don't ride. And everywhere I go, I leave that left
boot print behind in the dust, like a record that could last a thousand
ages. I'm getting to be Left Foot, the legend."

Nelsen 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, surer self, off the
Earth.

"It's all right, Gimp," Nelsen added. "I figured that I saw your tracks
and your tractor tread marks, up in the hills, just before I decided to
break away from Rodan..."

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 of times. So I doubled
back, and located what is left of Rodan's camp, and yours and Les'
initialed blastoff drums, which I've 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 mountain top, had I known... Well, it
doesn't matter, now. I'm out of stock, again, and full of money--got to
head back to Serene... You were trying for the Tovie station, eh?"

"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 a 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 Nelsen prompted.

"The Kuzaks got to the Belt okay--though they had to fight off some
rough and humorous characters. Storey 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. Our Eileen. Back in Jarviston, 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, eh? I didn't want to jolt any of you poor sick people, so I
camped. Let's get you all into Archers, for which I have a few spare
parts left. Then, after we roll up this sealed, air-conditioned tent of
a familiar material, we can be on our way."

"Just let's watch Rodan--that's all," Frank Nelsen warned.

"Sure--we'll keep him good and dopey with a tranquilizer..."

They aroused Dave Lester and Helen Rodan, helped them armor up,
explained briefly what the situation was, stuffed Xavier Rodan 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. Then 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, Nelsen 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 Rodan 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.

Nelsen was eager and tense, himself. Serene, he was thinking with
gratitude. Back to some of civilization. Back to freedom--if there
wasn't too much trouble on account of all that had happened. Speeding
along, they 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 Nelsen didn't try any tricks before the
white-armored international guards.

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

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

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

"A moment," gruffed one of the guards with a slight accent. "We shall
say who shall do what--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, stellene domes. But he didn't know in what
web of questioning and accusation he might soon be entangled.

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

"The S.O.B. might just get sent to a mental hospital--at the worst,"
Gimp growled loyally. "Well, come on, Frank--let's forget it, ditch our
Archies at the Hostel, get a culture steak, and look around to see what
you've missed..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Well, I got here. There was a need.
Somebody decided that I was the best available talent. This is the first
step. Maybe I'll have my own spot--bigger and better. Or get back to my
own regular self, working Out There with the men."

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

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

He told her the story, briefly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But Gimp and Frank were already shelling 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 hock, and my tractor
sold. And an old buddy of ours is waiting for us at a repair and
outfitting shop near the space port. I hope we didn't jump the gun,
assuming you want to get out into the open again, too?"

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

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

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

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

"They are," Nelsen told him.

"Passing close to Mars, which is lined up orbitally along our route,"
Gimp put in. "Did you beam Two-and-Two and Charlie on Venus?"

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

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

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

"So we'll get a good meal, and then buy our load," Frank enthused.

He felt the texture of his deflated bubb. 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.

Blastoff 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
bubbs. For Nelsen 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.




V


"It's the life of Reilly, Paul," Ramos was beaming back to Jarviston,
Minnesota, not many hours after Frank Nelsen, Gimp Hines and he started
out from the Moon, with their ultimate destination--after the delivery
of their loads of supplies to the Kuzaks--tentatively marked in their
minds as Pallastown 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 at 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, homing
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' 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-to-orbit weight problem 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 steak 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 Nelsen and Gimp Hines, who were riding the rigging of their
respective bubbs, 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--overinterested people might be listening,"
they suddenly forgot their own enthusiasms. They realized. Their hides
tingled unpleasantly.

Ramos' dark face hardened. Still he spoke depreciatingly. "Shucks, Paul,
this is a well-focused beam. Besides it's 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 Nelsen contacted Art Kuzak, 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--186,000 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 Kuzak's warning was carefully cryptic, yet plain
to Nelsen 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 rasped, 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
flush with gains, and seeking merely to relieve the tensions of their
restrained, artificial existences in a wild spree; refugees from rigid
Tovie 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 Nelsen 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 blip or luminous speck.
Fragments of conversations 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 U.S.S.F. bubb 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 Storey had once
done, they all started hydroponic gardens inside their bubbs. In the
pleasant, steamy sun-warmth of those stellene 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 bubbs.
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 microfilmed 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 stellene 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 quickly, "Yeah, I
know, Frank--don't scowl. When you aren't looking, it can up and kill
you. Like with my Uncle José, 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 hazy sphere with those swirled, almost fluid
markings, where the spores of a perhaps sentient vegetable life followed
the paths of thin winds, blowing equatorward from the polar caps of
hoarfrost.

The three stellene rings bumped lightly on the ten mile chunk of
captured asteroidal rock and nickel-iron that was Phobos, Mars' 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 U.N.-tended between ground-and-orbit rocket port,
and a few hydroponic garden domes nestled in the jaggedness were about
all that Phobos had--other than the magnificent view of the Red Planet,
below.

Gimp Hines' 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 Pallastown, and maybe lots farther, pal."

Frank Nelsen 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. Then had come the colonists, with their tractors and
their rolls of stellene to make sealed dwellings and covered fields in
that thin, almost oxygenless 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 into conflict with a 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 repellant 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 go down, too. But the gravity is
twice that of the Moon--getting up and down isn't so easy. Besides, once
when I made a stopover in space, after a nice short hop, I got into
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
Syrtis Major, the great equatorial wedge of blue-green growths on the
floor of a vanished ocean, first.

"Mitchell 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, Nelsen was a bit worried. But he had
a perhaps 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, toward the Kuzaks and Pallastown. That condition might
not last... Gimp, are you honest-to-gosh set on going down to this
dried-up, museum-world?"

"Umhmm. See you soon, though," Gimp answered, grinning. "I'll leave my
bubb and my load of supplies up here on Phobos. Be back for it probably
in a week. And there'll be a freight-bubb cluster, or something, for me
to join up with, and follow you Out..."

Nelsen and Ramos left Gimp Hines before he boarded the winged skip-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 bubb ionics could wring out of the sunshine, weakened now, with
distance. They knew about where to find the Kuzaks. But contact was
weeks off. When they were close enough, they could radio safely,
checking the exact position of Art's and Joe's supply post. And they
knew enough to steer clear of Ceres, the largest Asteroid, which was
Tovie-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.

"Eldorado," 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 catcall--literally--in
their helmet phones. "Meow!" It was falsely plaintive 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 S.O.B.," Nelsen growled softly.

For ten hours, nothing else happened. Then there were some tiny
radar-blips, which could have indicated meteors. Nelsen and Ramos
changed the angle of the ion guides of their ionic motors to move their
bubbs 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. Their rings collapsed under them--the sealer was no good
for holes of such size. At once, the continued spin of the bubbs wound
them, like limp laundry, into knots.

While Nelsen 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 Nelsen'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, Nelsen 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 Nelsen
regained a blurred consciousness. He was lying, unarmored, inside a
bubb--perhaps his own, which had been patched and reinflated. 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.

"Busht out shummore!" somebody was hollering. "We got jackpot--the whole
fanshy works! I almost think I'm back in Sputtsberg--wherever hell that
is... But where's the wimmin? 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 Nelsen 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 shleep, 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 Nelsen's head zeroed out again in a pyrotechnic burst...

He awoke to almost absolute silence, and to the turning of the whole
universe around him. But of course it was himself that was
rotating--boots over head. 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.

First, Frank Nelsen hardly knew where he was. Then he understood that he
was drifting free in space, in an armor. He thought it was his own until
he failed to recognize the scuffed, grimy interior. Even the workshirt
he was wearing wasn't the new blue one he had put on, it seemed only
hours ago. It was a greasy grey.

Etched into the scratched plastic of the helmet that covered his head,
he saw "Archer III--ser. no. 828211." And casually stuck into the
gasketted rim of the collar, was a note, pencilled jaggedly on a scrap
of paper:

"Honest, Greenie, your a pal. All that nice stuff. Thanks a 1,000,000!
Couple of my boys needed new Archies, bad. Thanks again. You and your
buddie are not having so bad a brake. These old threes 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 card in shirt pocket. We don't need it. Have lots of
fun. Just remember me as The Stinker."

Frank Nelsen was quivering with anger and scare. He saw that a mended
steel net, containing a few items, had got wrapped around him with his
turning. He groped for the ion-guide of the ancient shoulder-ionic, and
touched a control. Slowly his spin was checked. Meanwhile he untangled
himself, and saw what must be Ramos, adrift like himself in a battered
Archer Three, 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, too, Frank?" Ramos asked. For close
communication, the old helmet-phones still worked okay.

"I did," Nelsen 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?"

Nelsen 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 S.O.B.! Cripes, do I always land in the soup?"

"The bossman with the teeth, I remember," Ramos grated. "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
sometime, but not equipped like this."

"We'll check everything--see how bad off they left us," Nelsen 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 hauling nets contained battered chisels, hammers, saws for
metal, a radiation counter, a beaten-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 even to try to communicate over any
distance with the worn-out radio transmitters. The nuclear batteries
were ninety-percent 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
chlorophane, key to the freshening and re-oxygenation 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 wry grin showed some of his reckless
humor. "It's not utterly awful, yet," he said. "How do you feel?"

Nelsen's hip hurt. And he found that he had an awful hangover from the
knockout drug, and the 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.

"Guess we'll have to become asteroid-hoppers--miners--like the slob
said," Nelsen 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 hurtled
on, certainly decelerating considerably, for days, yet, before they were
in the Belt. Even that looked like enormous emptiness.

And the brightened speck of Pallas was too far to one side. Tovie Ceres
was too near on the other side--left, it would be, if they considered
the familiar northern hemisphere stars of Earth as showing "up"
position. The old instruments had put them off-course. Still, they had
to bear even farther left to try 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.

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, chiselling and sawing out a greyish 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 into the nets which they were
towing.

"For luck," Ramos laughed. "Without it we'll never pay J. John."

"Shut up. Big deal," Nelsen snapped.

"Okay. Shut up it is!" Ramos answered him.

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' sunken eyes light up with an ancient
fever, until he remembered, and until Nelsen said:

"Not for the gold, anymore, pal. Common, out here. So it's almost
worthless, everywhere. Not much use as 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 their 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
thermocouples to power the ionics were almost shot. They tried to fix
them up, 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 Kuzaks' 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 paymetal, 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 bubb 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 boundaried 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.

Nelsen 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.

"Cripes 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," Nelsen growled.

They knew that the Kuzaks, maybe Two-and-Two, Reynolds, Gimp, Storey,
must be trying to call them. They kept listening in their helmet-phones.
But this time Frank Nelsen 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 the hope of a fortunate
accident. Only once they heard, "Nelsen! Ra..." The beam swept on. It
could have been Joe Kuzak's voice. But inevitably, somewhere, there had
to be a giving up point for the searchers.

"This is where I came in," Nelsen 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...
Stake me to a run into Pallastown...?" 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
ten or so voices as originating not much over a hundred miles away. But
they checked their trembling enthusiasm just in time. That was sheerest
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.

Nelsen 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 midst, 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 specks moved past.

While he waited, Frank Nelsen's mind fumbled back to the lost phantom of
Jarviston, Minnesota, again. To a man named Jig Hollins who had got
married, stayed home. Yellow? Hell...! Nelsen imagined the comforts he
might have had in the Space Force. He coaxed up a dream girl--blonde,
dark, red-headed--with an awful wistfulness. He thought of Nance Codiss,
the neighbor kid. He fumbled at the edge of a vast, foggy vision, where
the wanderlust 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.

"Haw-haw," he heard Ramos mock.

"Yeah," Nelsen said thickly. "Lucky for them that they aren't near
us--being careless with their beams, that way..."

Frank Nelsen 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 slight, men can get along on
small quantities of food. The sweetish, starchy liquid that they could
suck through a tube from the air-restorers--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-restorers 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 thermocouple 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 hundred yards long. They climbed over its
edge. The thin sunshine hit dried soil, and something like corn-stubble
in rows. Ahead was a solid 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--as surely, though less spectacularly. Radioactive poison,
perhaps... Here, there had been an instant of unimaginable concussion,
and of 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 Nelsen 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."

Nelsen hardly cared about the archeological aspects just then.
Excitement and hope that became certainty, enlivened his dulled brain.

"An energy source," he grated 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 chinks than the rooms that humans would inhabit. They shoved
away soft, multi-colored fabrics spun from glass-wool, a metal case with
graduated dials and a lens, baubles of gold and glinting mineral.

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 Nelsen and Miguel Ramos began to work gingerly, though the gloves
of their old Archer Threes were insulated. Here, sixty million years of
stopped 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.

"DC current, huh?" Ramos said, breathing hard of the rotten air in his
helmet.

"Yeah--gotta be," Frank answered quickly. "Same as from a thermocouple.
Voltage about two hundred. Lots of current, though. Hope these old
ionics'll 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 electrolytically, 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-restorers could
be used again, augmenting the action of the pale sunshine on the
photosynthetic processes 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 Nelsen said, speaking low and quick,
and with the boldness of an enlivened 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 Pallas. There'll be a way to
find the Kuzak twins."

Ramos 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, Nelsen... Oh, Mex... 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. Nelsen 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' eyes had a battlelight.
"All right, Tiflin--approach. These guns are lined up and loaded."

"Aw--is _that_ friendship, Mex?" the renegade seemed to wheedle. 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, Mex--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," Nelsen gruffed.

Tiflin cocked his head inside the helmet of a brand-new Archer Six, in a
burlesqued 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, Nelsen almost thought that the change could be for the good. But
it was naive to hope that that could happen. Glen 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?

Nelsen looked at the other man, who wore a Tovie armor. Tall,
starvation-lean. Horse-faced, with a lugubrious, bumpkinish 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 Ceres, and sort of tumbled away."

With his body stiff as a stick, Igor toppled forward, his mouth gaping
in dismay. He turned completely over, his great boots kicking awkwardly.
His angular elbows flapped like crow-wings. He righted himself, looked
astonished, then beatifically self-approving. He burped delicately,
patted his chest plate, then sniffed in sad protest at the leveled
pistols.

Now Nelsen and Ramos cast off the loaded nets they had been towing, and
closed in on this strange pair. Nelsen did the searching, while Ramos
pointed the guns.

"Haven't even got my shiv anymore, 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, you S.O.B.! The
funny character that robbed and dumped Ramos and me, I'll bet. Probably
with your help! You know him, huh?"

"_Knew_--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,
anymore, 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!" Nelsen gritted 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!" Nelsen 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 Nelsen 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 Wheaties lately, have you, Frank? Go ahead--hit, knock
yourself out. You, too, Mex. 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. Lemme have a couple of pokes at the
slob," Ramos snapped.

"Aw-right, aw-right--who's asking you guys to believe me?" Tiflin cut
in. "I'll beam the twins for you--since I'd guess your transmitter won't
reach. You can listen in, and talk back through my set. Okay?"

"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. "Kuzak... Kuzak...
Kuzak... Kuzak..." he said into his phone. "Missing boys alive and
coming to you. Mex and old Guess Which... Kicking and independent, but
very hungry, I think... Put on the coffee pot, you storekeepers...
Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak... 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 Kuzak's voice snarled guardedly. "I hear you, Ram and Nel. Come
in, if you can...! Tif, you garbage! Someday...! This is all. This is
all..." The message broke off.

Tiflin smirked. "Third quadrant of the Belt," he said, giving a position
in space almost like latitude and longitude on Earth. "About twenty
minutes of the thirty-first degree. Three degrees above median 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 bubbs was in
view in the near distance, and Ramos and Nelsen could contact Art Kuzak
themselves.

"We've got Tiflin and his Tovie pal with us, Art," Frank Nelsen 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 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 that Moonhop. 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 pal who originated from the
dark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were fading against
the stars.

Nelsen and Ramos, the long-lost, glided in, past some grim hoppers. A
bubb and sweet air were around them once more. They shed their stinking
Archer Threes. Hot showers--miraculous luxury--played over them. They
rubbed disinfectant 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 Nelsen 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 losses long past. The Kuzaks
looked leaner and tougher, now, and there were plenty of present
difficulties to worry them. Joe Kuzak hurried out to argue with the
miners at the raw metal receiving bins and at the store bubbs. 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 Tovie 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 raise 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 get
really annoyed, and kick this place apart."

Art Kuzak blew air up past his pug nose, and continued. "Finance--here
we go again, Frank!" he chuckled. "Gimp Hines is helping us. After Mars,
he came here without trouble. He's in Pallastown, 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 a
loan, anymore."

Art grinned wryly at Nelsen 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'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'."

"Okay, Cuties," Art laughed.

Joe Kuzak had just come back into the dwelling and office bubb.

"Don't let my twin sell you any rotten apples, fellas," he warned
lightly. "He might be expecting you to transport your collateral to
Pallastown. Naturally anybody trying to strangle this Post will be
blocking the route. You might get robbed again. Also murdered."

Ramos' 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 camouflage
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 Nelsen 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 grey, 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 toward Pallastown. 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 Tiflin might make guesses about what they
meant to do, Nelsen and Ramos would have taken no chances. They had to
be brutal. Homing darts pierced armor. The four went to sleep.




VI


The asteroid, Pallas, 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
Pallas' 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 three
thousand miles into a zone of such heat and pressure? But the asteroid
world had exploded. Pallas was an exposed and cooled piece of its heart.

Pallas had a day of twenty-four hours because men, working with great
ion jets angling toward the stars, had adjusted its natural rate of
rotation for their own convenience to match the terrestrial. A greater
change was Pallastown.

Frank Nelsen and Miguel Ramos made the considerable journey to it
without further incident. Because he was tense with hurry, Nelsen'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
metal 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 Nelsen's wonder was hurried and dulled.

Gimp Hines and David Lester were waiting inside the stellene reception
dome when Nelsen and Ramos landed lightly at the port on their own feet,
with no more braking assistance than their own shoulder-ionics.

Greetings were curiously breathless yet casual, but without any
backslapping.

"We'd about given you two up," Gimp said. "But an hour ago Joe Kuzak
beamed me, and said you'd be along with some museum stuff... Les lives
here, now, working with the new Archeological Institute."

"Hi-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 onto Art Kuzak, 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 onto--or being latched
onto by--somebody whom 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 detail 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, dammit--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-hued cylinder
pointing upward. Shapes of soft, bluish grey, 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 eyelike 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 fibre
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 Nelsen'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?"

Hines terminated the pictured sequence. "Frank--Ramos--I'd 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. Okay--I'm
talking about dough, again. Still, who wants to detach himself, right
away, from something pretty marvelous, by selling it? I'd dump most of
the other things. Getting a loan--the hock-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, any time."

"Right now, then," Frank said.

"Hey, you impolite slobs!" Ramos laughed. "When do you consult me,
co-discoverer and -owner? Awright, skip it--you're the Wizards of Oz.
I'll just grab out 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, silken-soft, though spun from fibre of
colored glass. And some wheeled devices, which might have been toys.
Lester and Hines 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 Nelsen
and Ramos, to whom a thousand dollars had seemed a 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'll 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.N.S.F. even less. However, an escort is due in, now. We
can move out again, with you, in seven hours."

"Thank you, sir," Nelsen responded.

Gimp Hines had the better part of the supplies to be purchased already
lined up at the warehouses.

Nelsen counted the money he had left. "Figuring losses and gains, I have
no idea how much I owe J. 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 J. 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. "Couple of times I forgot J. John. But I
lost my shirt on those loads that were lifted off you boneheads. The
Kuzaks reimbursed me for half. Do you two want to cover the other half?
Aw--forget it! Who's got time to figure all this? That old coot doped
himself out a nice catch-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..."

Dave Lester had wandered off embarrassedly, there in the warehouse. But
now he returned, clearing his throat for attention.

"Fellas," he said. "Helen and I want you to come out to our apartment,
now, for dinner."

"Shucks, that's swell, Les," Ramos responded, suddenly curious.

"Here, also," Nelsen 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
handholds, onto a wispy balcony. Nelsen 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 helped Helen and me to get
married and get set up out here. The Archeological Institute paid our
way to Pallastown. 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..."

Nelsen 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, Les!" he burst out almost angrily. "How about your services,
just now, as an archeological 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
apology in her eyes 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. "Riding an Archer in
space, at zero-G, is different from this..."

Things were a bit less strained, after that, through the skimpy meal,
with its special devices, unique to the asteroids and their tiny
gravity. Clamps to fasten plates to tables and victuals to plates.
Drinking vessels that were half-squeeze bottles. Such equipment was now
available in what might once have 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 Nelsen said
presently.

"Yeah--I know. Les'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. Twenty percent 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 Pallastown for a while, helping out with this end of the
Twin's enterprises, won't you, Gimp?"

Hines grinned. "Probably. Glad you slobs got memories. Glad to be of
assistance, anytime. Les 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, and then happily. That was how they worked the
fabulous generosity of spacemen in the chips on him.

Nelsen, 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 Nelsen 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 an achy wistfulness,
of a small hero-worshipping girl named Jennie 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 mid-air. He thought he ought to find himself a friend--then decided
perversely, to hell with it.

He thought of the trouble on Earth, of Ceres, of Tiflin and Igor, of
Fanshaw, the latest leader of the Asteroid Belt toughs--the Jolly
Lads--that you heard about. He thought about how terribly vulnerable to
attack Pallastown seemed, even with its encirclement of outriding guard
stations. He thought of Paul Hendricks, Two-and-Two Baines, Charlie
Reynolds, Otto Kramer, Mitch Storey, 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 cellulose lining of a small carton bought at a
souvenir shop, he placed the sixty million-year old golden band with its
odd arabesques 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 Codiss! Thinking about you and all the neighbors. This might
reach you by Christmas. Remember me? Frank Nelsen."

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
Jarviston, 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 Pallas. To the Kuzaks, this shipment would now have
seemed small, but it was much larger than the loads Ramos and Nelsen 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. Nelsen wasn't sure that 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 bubb.

All through the long journey--beam calls ahead were avoided for added
safety--Nelsen 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 Kuzak talked expansively in his office bubb:

"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, stellene plants and
other factories to construct. There'll be garden bubbs, repair
shops--everything. Time, work, and a little luck will do it. You
listening, Frank?"

Nelsen got a bit cagy 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 KRNH Enterprises--_K_uzak, _R_amos,
_N_elsen and _H_ines. The 'H' could also stand for Hendricks--Paul
Hendricks."

"I _like_ it that way, you suspicious slob," Art Kuzak chuckled.

So another phase began for Nelsen. Offices bored him. Amassing money,
per se, meant little to him, except as 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 Kuzak. Or himself, with
both distance and home engrained confusingly into his nature.

One thing that Nelsen 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 for a while, as had always happened, so
far. The Belt responded with relative peace. Tovie Ceres, 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 Nelsen, or Joe Kuzak who
usually operated separately, or a few guards, or several
asteroid-hoppers, most of whom were tough and steady and good friends to
know. Often enough, Nelsen was alone.

At first, KRNH just handled the usual supplies. But when factory and
hydroponic equipment began to arrive, Joe Kuzak and Frank Nelsen might
be out establishing a new post. There'd be green help, bubbing out from
the Moon, to break in. Nelsen would see new faces that still seemed
familiar, because they were like those of the old Bunch, as it had been.
Grim, 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 Nelsen was in Pallastown--for business, for relief, for a
bit of hell-raising; to see Gimp and the David Lesters. Pretty soon
there was an heir 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 Nelsen's
life much, nor Gimp's, nor Ramos'. But it sure helped the Lesters.

David Lester had resigned from Archeological Survey. He was getting
actually sharp. He was doing independent research, and was setting up
his own business in Belt antiques.

Frank Nelsen had another reason for coming to Pallastown. Afield, you
avoided beam communication, nowadays, whenever you could. Someone might
trace your beam to its source, and jump you for whatever you had. But
Gimp Hines could tell Nelsen about the absent Bunch members and the old
friends, while they both sat in the little KRNH office in Town.

"... Paul Hendricks is still the same, Frank. New bunch around him...
Too bad we can't call him, now--because the Earth is on the far side of
the sun. Mitch Storey just vanished into the Martian thickets, during
one of his jaunts. Almost a year ago, now... I didn't see him when I
stopped over on Mars, but he was back at the Station once, after that.
Take it easy, Frank. They've looked with helicopters, and even on the
ground; you couldn't do any more. I'll keep in touch, to see if anything
turns up..."

After a minute, Nelsen relaxed, slightly. "Two-and-Two? I guess he's
okay--with Charlie Reynolds looking after him?"

"Peculiar about Charlie," Gimp answered, looking awed and puzzled. "Got
the news from old J. John, his granddad, when he acknowledged the
receipt of our latest draft, by letter. Hold your hat. Charlie got
himself killed... I'll dig the letter out of the file."

Nelsen sat up very straight. "Never mind," he said. "Just tell me more.
Anything can happen."

"Our most promising member," Gimp mused. "He didn't get much. The Venus
Expedition had to move some heavy equipment to the top of a mountain, to
make some electrostatic tests before a storm. Charlie had just climbed
down from the helicopter. A common old lightning bolt hit him. Somebody
played _Fire Streak_ on the bagpipes--inside a sealed tent--while they
buried him. Otherwise, he didn't even get a proper spaceman's funeral.
Venus' escape velocity is almost as high as Earth's. Boosting a corpse
up into orbit, just for atmospheric cremation, would have been too much
of a waste for the Expedition's rigid economy."

Nelsen had never really been very close to Charlie Reynolds, though he
had liked the flamboyant Good Guy. Now, it was all a long ways back,
besides. Nelsen didn't feel exactly grief. Just an almost mystical
bitterness, a shock and an uncertainty, as if he could depend on
nothing.

"So what about Two-and-Two?" he growled, remembering how he used to
avoid any responsibility for the big, good-hearted lug; but now he felt
surer about himself, and things seemed different.

"I guess the Expedition medic had to straighten him out with
devil-killers," Hines answered. "He bubbed all the way back to Earth,
alone, to see J. John about Charlie. I beamed him, there, before the
Earth hid behind the sun. He was still pretty shaken up. Funny,
too--Charlie's opportunity-laden Venus has turned out to be a bust, for
two centuries, at least, unless new methods, which aren't in sight, yet,
turn up. Sure--at staggering expense, and with efforts on the order of
fantasy, reaction motors could be set up around its equator, to make it
spin as fast as the Earth. Specially developed green algae have already
been seeded all over the planet. They're rugged, they spread fast. But
it will take the algae about two hundred years to split the carbon
dioxide and give the atmosphere a breathable amount of free oxygen, to
say nothing of cracking the poisonous formaldehyde."

"Two-and-Two's back in Jarviston, then?" Nelsen demanded.

"No--not anymore--just gimme breath," Hines went on. "He and Charlie had
figured another destination of opportunity--Mercury, the planet nearest
the sun, everlasting frozen night on one side, eternal, zinc-melting
sunshine on the other. But there's the fringe zone between the two--the
Twilight Zone. If you can live under stellene, you've got a better place
there than Mars might have been. Colonists are going there, to quit the
Earth, to get away from it all. Two-and-Two was about to leave for
Mercury, when I last spoke to him. By now he's probably almost there.
And even under the most favorable conditions, Mercury is hard to
beam--too much solar magnetic interference."

"That poor sap," Nelsen gruffed.

"It probably isn't that bad, anymore," Hines commented. "Sometime I
might go to Mercury, myself--when I get good and sick of sitting on my
tail, here--when I always was a man of action! Mercury does have
possibilities--plenty of solar power, certainly; plenty of frozen
atmosphere on the dark face. Interesting, Frank... Oh, hell, I
forgot--there's a letter here for you. And a package. Just arrived...
I'll scram, now. Got to go down to the quays. Hold the fort, here, will
you?"

Gimp Hines grinned as he left.

Nelsen was glad to be alone. The lonesomeness of the Big Vacuum was
getting grimed into him. When he saw the return name and address on the
package, and the two hundred-ten dollar postage sticker, he thought,
_Cripes--that poor kid--what did I start?_ Then the awful wave of
nostalgia for Jarviston, Minnesota, hit him, as he fumbled to open the
microfilmed letter capsule, and put it in the viewer.

"Hello, Frank--it has to be that, doesn't it, and not Mr. Nelsen, since
you've sent me this miraculous bracelet--which I don't dare wear very
much, since I don't want to lose an arm to some international--or even
interstellar--jewel thief! It makes me feel like the Queen of
Something--certainly not Serene, since it implies calmness and repose,
which I certainly don't feel--no offense to our Miss Sands, whom I
admire enormously. In a very small way I am repaying to you in kind--an
item which I made, myself, and which I know that some spacemen use
inside their Archers. You see, we are all informed in details. Paul,
Otto, Chippie Potter and his dog, and other characters whom you won't
remember, send their best greetings. Oh, I've got Stardust fever, too,
but I'll yield to my folks' wishes and wait, and learn a profession that
will be of some use Out There. May you wear what I'm sending in good
health, safety and fortune. Send no more staggering gifts, please--I
couldn't stand it--but please do write. Tell me how it really is in the
Belt. You simply don't realize how much--"

Nance Codiss' missive rattled along, and the scrawled words got to be
like small, happy bells inside Nelsen's skull. His crooked grin came
out; he unpacked the sweater--creylon wool, very warm, bright red, a bit
crude in workmanship here and there--but imagine a girl bothering, these
days! He donned the garment and decided it fit fine.

Then he tried to write a letter:

"Hi, Nance! I've just put it on--first time--beautiful! It'll stay right
with me. Thanks. Talk about being staggered..."

There he bogged down, some, wondering how much she had changed,
wondering just what he ought to say to her, and who these characters
that he wouldn't remember, might be. Cripes, how old was she, now?
Seventeen? He ended up taking her at her word. He described Pallastown
rather heavy-handedly, and bought some microfilm postcards to go along
with his missive, as soon as he went out to mail it.

But a few hours later, from deep in space, he looked back at the Town,
shining in the distance, and in the blue mood of thinking about Charlie
Reynolds, Mitch Storey, and Two-and-Two, he wondered how much longer it,
or Nance, or anything else, could last. Then he glanced down at the
bright sweater, and chuckled...

Unexpectedly, Ramos remained an active member of KRNH Enterprises for
over a year. But the end had to come. "I told Art I'd let my dough ride,
Frank," he said to Nelsen in the lounge of Post One. "I'll only draw
enough earnings to build me a real, deep-space bubb, nuclear-propelled,
and with certain extra gadgets. A few guys have tried to follow the
unmanned, instrumented rockets, out to the system of Saturn. Nobody got
back, yet. I think I know what they figured wrong. The instruments
showed--well, skip it... I'm going into Town to prepare. It'll take
quite a while, so I'll have some fun, too."

Ramos' eyes twinkled with a secret triumph--before the fact.

"You don't argue a fighting rooster out of fighting," Nelsen laughed.
"Besides, it wouldn't be Destiny--or any fun--to succeed. So accept the
complimentary comparison--if it fits--which maybe it doesn't, you
egotistical bonehead. Good luck--_buena suerte, amigo_. I'll look you up
in Town, if I get a chance..."

Nelsen was always busy to the gills. Progress was so smooth for another
couple of years, that the hunch of Big Trouble building up, became a
gnawing certainty in his nerves.

Of course there were always the Jolly Lads to watch out for--the extreme
individualists, space-twisted and wild. Robbing and murdering could seem
easier than digging. Take your loot into Pallastown--who knew you hadn't
grubbed it, yourself? Sell it. Get the stink blown off you--forget some
terrible things that had happened to you. Have yourself a time. Strike
Out again. Repeat...

Nelsen knew that, through the months, he had killed defensively at least
twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet--weapons sanctioned by
pious and cautious international agreement, were more lethal, now, to
match the weapons of the predatory. Once by splitting a helmet with a
rifle barrel. When he was out alone, exploring a new post site on a
small asteroid, a starved Tovie runaway had jumped him. Maybe he should
regret the end of that incident.

Trips to Pallastown were increasingly infrequent. But there was one time
when he almost had come specially to see Ramos' new bubb, still under
wraps, supposedly. Well--that erratic character had it out on a long
test run. Damn him! As usual, time was crowding Nelsen. He had to get
back on the job. He had just a couple of hours left.

He wrote a letter to Nance Codiss, answering one of hers--funny, he'd
never yet tried to contact her vocally. Being busy, being cautious about
using a beam--these were good reasons. Now there was hardly enough spare
time to reach twice across the light-minutes. Maybe the real truth was
that men got strangely shy in the silences of the Belt.

"Dear Nance: You seem to be making fine headway in your new courses. All
the good words, for that..."

There were plenty of good words, but he didn't put many of them down. He
didn't know if the impulse to write _Darling_, was just his own
loneliness, which any girl with a kind word would have filled. He didn't
know her, or that part of himself, very well. He kept remembering her as
she had been. Then he'd realize that memory wasn't a stable thing to
hang onto. Everything changed--how well he had learned that! She was
older, now, intelligent, and at school again, studying some kind of
medical laboratory technology. Certainly she had become more
sophisticated and elusive--her gay letters were just a superficial part
of what she must be. And certainly there were dates and boyfriends, and
all the usual phases of getting out of step with a mere recollection,
like himself. Nelsen had some achy emotions. Should he ask for her
picture? Should he send one of himself?

He just scribbled on, ramblingly, as usual. Yep, in a new Archer Seven,
you could undo a few clamps, pull a foot up out of a boot, and actually
change your socks... Inconsequential nonsense like that. He ended by
telling her not to worry about any knicknacks he might send--that they
came easy, out here. He microposted the letter, and mailed a square of
soft glass-silk of many colors.

Then he pronounced a few cuss words, laughed at himself for getting so
serious, shrugged, and with the casualness of hopper with his pockets
loaded, moved toward the rec area, which was some distance off.

It was night over this part of rapidly growing Pallastown. Moving along
a lighted causeway, he saw the man with the shovel teeth. Glory, had
_he_ managed to survive so long? His mere presence, here, seemed like a
signal of the end of peace. Nelsen and Ramos used to practice
close-contact tactics at zero-G, in space. So Nelsen didn't even wait
for the man to notice him. He leaped, and sped like an arrow, thudding
into the guy's stomach with both of his boot heels. Shovel Teeth was
hurled fifty yards backward, Nelsen hurtling with him all the way.
Unless Nelsen wanted to kill him, there wasn't any more to do. Partial
revenge.

He wasn't worried about anybody except the guy's Jolly Lad henchmen.
There was nobody close by. Now he did a quick fade, sure that nobody had
seen who he was, during the entire episode. No use to call the
cops--there were too many uncertainties about the setup in wild,
polyglot Pallastown. Nelsen moved on to the rec area.

He didn't go into a garishly splendid place, named _The Second Stop_.
Thus, he didn't see its owner, whose identity he had already heard
about, of course. Not that he wouldn't have liked to. But there wasn't
any time to get involved in a long chat with a woman... Nor did he see
the tall, skinny, horse-faced comic, known only as Igor, go through
slapstick acrobatics that once would have been impossible...

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

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

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

"Uh-huh--I'd bet on it... By the way, there's a grapevine yarn around.
Somebody kicked Fanshaw--the Jolly Lad big-shot--in the belly. You,
perhaps?"

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

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

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

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

"Hell--you're the mess specialist, Frank. Fanshaw isn't here for fun.
And there's been that new trouble at home..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Joe Kuzak, full of new antibiotics and coagulants, was still up and
around. "So we knocked off a few of them, Frank," he said ruefully in
his office bubb. "Several were in Tovie armor. Runaways, or agents?
They're crowding us, boy. Hell, what a junk heap this post is going to
be, to sort out..."

"Get to it," Nelsen commented.

"You've got something in mind?"

"Uh-huh. Coming in, I heard somebody address somebody else as Fan.
Fanshaw, that would be. And I kind of remembered his voice, as he
cracked out orders. He was with this group. I'm going after him."

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

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

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

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

Decelerating, he draped a sheet of synthetic cellulose that he'd brought
along, loosely over his armored shape. Then he drifted unobtrusively
close. At a half-mile distance, he peered through the telescope sight of
his launcher. The bubbs were close together. The lookout floated free.
Him, he got first, with a careful, homing shot.

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

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

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

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

"Fanshaw's groups will fight it out for a new leader, Joe," he said.
"That should keep them busy, for a while..."

Succeeding months were quieter. But the Tovies had lost no advantage.
They had Ceres, the biggest of the asteroids, and their colonies were
moving in on more and more others that were still untouched, closing
them, against all agreements, to any competition.

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

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

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

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

Ramos showed the shadow of a reckless grin of triumph. Then he passed
out.

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

Saturn--another of the great, cold, largely gaseous planets, where it
would perhaps always be utterly futile for a man to try to land...
Ramos, the little Mex who chased the girls. Ramos, the hero, the
historical figure, now...

Cursing under his breath, Nelsen wandered vaguely to _The Second Stop_.
There, he saw what probably every spaceman had dreamed of. Lucette of
Paris swimming nude in a gigantic dewdrop--possible where gravity was
almost nil. Music played. Beams of colored light swung majestically,
with prismatic effects through the great, flattened, shimmering ovoid of
water, while Lucette's motions completed a beautiful legend...

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

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

"Tiflin hasn't been around here for a long time, Frank," she was saying.
"You know that his buddy entertained for me for a while. I have an
interested nature, but Tiflin never gave me anything but wisecracks.
There are lots of Tovies around--there's even a center for runaways. I
don't ask questions of customers usually. And technically, all I can
require of a comic is talent. This Igor had a certain kind. What is the
difficulty now?"

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

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

"Nothing much for me to do," he answered. "I only happened to notice,
while I was coming in to Pallas, that all the guard stations, extending
way out, were quietly very alert. But is that enough? Well, if they
can't cope with an attack, what good am I? We're vulnerable, here. I
guess we just sit tight and wait."

She smiled faintly. "All right--let's. Sit, relax, converse. Stop being
the Important Personage for a while, Frank."

"Look who's talking. Okay--what do you know that's new to tell?"

"A few things. I keep track of most everybody."

He took her slender hand, brown in his angular fist, that was pale from
his space gloves. "Gimp, first," he said.

"Still on Mercury, with Two-and-Two. Two-and-Two was a bricklayer, a
good beginning for a construction man. That seems to be paying off, as
colonists move in. Gimp is setting up solar power stations."

"Encouraging information, for once. Here's a hard one--Jig Hollis. The
real intelligent man who stayed home. I've envied him for years."

"Hmmm--yes, Frank. Intelligent, maybe--but he never quite believed it,
himself. His wife stayed with him, even after he turned real sour and
reckless. One night he hit a big oak tree with his car. Now, he is just
as dead as if he had crashed into the sun at fifty miles per second. He
couldn't take knowing that he was scared to do what he wanted."

"Hell!" Nelsen said flatly.

"Now who else should I gossip about?" Eileen questioned. "Oh, yes--Harv
Diamond, hero of our lost youth, who got space fatigue. Well, he
recovered and returned to active duty in the U.S.S.F. Which perhaps
leaves me with just my own love life to confess." She smiled lightly.
"Once there was a kid named Frankie Nelsen, who turned out to be a very
conscientious jerk. Since then, there have been scads of rugged,
romantic characters on all sides... You're going to ask about Miguel
Ramos."

She paused, looked unhappy and tired. "The celebrity," she said. "Mashed
up. But he'll recover--this time. I've seen him--sent him flowers, sat
beside him. But what do you do with a clown like that? Lock him in the
closet or look at him through a telescope? Goodbye--hello--goodbye. A
kid with gaudy banners flying, if he lives to be forty--which he never
will. They'll be giving him artificial hands and feet, and he'll be
trying for Pluto. A friend. I guess I'm proud. That's all. Anything else
you want to know?"

"Yeah. There was a cute little girl at Serene."

"Jennie Harper. She married one of those singing Moon prospectors.
Somebody murdered them both--way out on Far Side."

Frank Nelsen's mouth twisted. "That's enough, pal," he said. "I better
go do my sitting tight someplace else. Keep your Archer handy. Thanks,
and see you..."

Within forty minutes David Lester was showing him some pictures that a
hopper had brought in from a vault in a surface-asteroid.

On the screen, great, mottled shapes moved through a lush forest.
Thousands of tiny, flitting bat-like creatures--miniature pterodactyls
of the terrestrial Age of Reptiles--hovered over a swamp, where millions
of insects hung like motes in the light of the low sun. A much larger
pterodactyl, far above, glided gracefully over a cliff, and out to sea,
its long, beaked head turning watchfully.

"Hey!" Nelsen said mildly, as his jaded mind responded.

Lester nodded. "_They_ were on Earth, too--as the Martians must have
been--exploring and taking pictures, during the Cretaceous Period. Oh,
but there's a perhaps even better sequence! Like the Martians, they had
a world-wrecking missile, which they were building in space. Spherical.
About six miles in diameter, I calculate. Shall I show you?"

"No... I think I'll toddle over to the offices, Les. Keep wearing those
Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in his..."

Nelsen had donned his own Seven, with the helmet fastened across his
chest by a strap. At the KRNH office, there was a letter, which luckily
hadn't been sent out to Post Eight. The tone was more serious than that
of any that Nance Codiss had sent before.

"Dear Frank: I'm actually coming your way. I'll be stopping to work at
the Survey Station Hospital on Mars for two months en route..."

He read that far when he heard the sirens and saw the flashes of
defending batteries that were trying to ward off missiles from
Pallastown. He latched his helmet in place. He was headed for the
underground galleries when the first impacts came. He saw four domes
vanish in flashes of fire. Then he didn't run anymore. He had his small
rocket launcher, from the office. If they ever came close enough... But
of course they'd stay thousands of miles off. He got to the nearest
fallen dome as fast as he could. Everybody had been in armor, but there
were over a hundred dead. Emergency and rescue crews were operating
efficiently.

He glanced around for indications. No explosive, chemical or nuclear,
had yet been used. But there was the old Jolly Lad trick: Accelerate a
chunk of asteroid-material to a speed of several miles per second by
grasping it with your gloved hands, while the shoulder-ionic of your
armor was at full power. Start at a great distance, aim your missile
with your body, let it go... Impact would be sheer, blasting
incandescence. A few hundred chunks of raw metal could finish
Pallastown... Were these just crazy, wild slobs whooping it up, or real
crud provided with a purpose and reward? Either way, here was the
eternal danger to any Belt settlement.

Nelsen could have tried to reach an escape-exit into open space, but he
helped with the injured while he waited for more impacts to come. There
was another series of deflecting flashes from the defense batteries. Two
more domes vanished... Then--somehow--nothing more. Evidently some of
the attackers had been only half hearted, _this time_. Reprieve...

Almost four hundred people were dead. It could have been the whole Town.
Then spreading disaster. All Nelsen's friends were okay. The Posts
called in--okay, too. Nelsen waited three days. He wanted to help
defend, if the attack was renewed. But now the U.N.S.F. was
concentrating in the vicinity. For a while, things would be quiet, Out
Here. Just the same, he felt kind of fed up. He felt as if the end of
everything he knew had crept inevitably a little closer.

He beamed Mars--the Survey Station. He contacted Nance. He had known
that she should have arrived already. He was relieved. He knew what the
region between here and there could be like when there was trouble.

"It's me--Frank Nelsen--Nance," he said into his helmet-phone, as he
stood beyond the outskirts of the Town, on the barren, glittering
surface of Pallas. "I'm still wearing the sweater. Stay where you are.
I've never been on Mars, either. But I'll be there, soon..."

His old uncertainties about talking to her evaporated now that he was
doing it.

"For Pete's sake--Frank!" he heard her laugh happily, still sounding
like the neighbor kid. "Gosh, it's good to hear you!"

He left for Post One, soon after that. Nowadays, it was almost a
miniature of the ever more magnificent--if insecure--Pallastown. He kept
thinking angrily of Art Kuzak, getting a little overstuffed, it seemed.
The hunkie kid, the ex-football player who had become a big commercial
and industrial baron of the Belt. Easy living. Cuties around. And poor
twin Joe--just another stooge...

Nelsen went into the office, his fists clenched overdramatically. "I'm
taking a leave, Art--maybe a long one," he said.

Art Kuzak stared at him. "You damned, independent bums--you, too,
Nelsen!" he began to growl. But when he saw Nelsen's jaw harden, he got
the point, and grinned, instead. "Okay, Frank. Nobody's indispensible. I
might do the same when you come back--who knows...?"

Frank Nelsen joined a KRNH bubb convoy--Earthbound, but also passing
fairly close to Mars--within a few hours.




VII


Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of to
hell with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertain
mainstream of the things he knew best.

He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of smelted metal
rods--tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The sheaves had their own
propelling ionic motors. He lazed like a tramp. He talked with
asteroid-hoppers who meant to spend some time on Earth. Several had
become almost rich. Most had strong, quiet faces that showed both
distance- and home-hunger. A few had broken, and the angry sensitivity
was visible.

Nelsen treated himself well. He was relieved of the duty of eternal
vigilance by men whose job it was. So, for a while, his purpose was
almost successful.

But the memory--or ghost--of Mitch Storey was never quite out of his
mind. And, as a tiny, at first telescopic crescent with a rusty light
enlarged with lessened distance ahead, the ugly enigma of present-day
Mars dug deeper into his brain.

Every twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes--the length of the
Martian day--whenever the blue-green wedge of Syrtis Major appeared in
the crescent, he beamed the Survey Station, which was still maintained
for the increase of knowledge, and as a safeguard for incautious
adventurers who will tackle any dangerous mystery or obstacle. His
object was to talk to Nance Codiss.

"I thought perhaps you and your group had gotten restless and had
started out for the Belt already," he laughed during their first
conversation.

"Oh, no--a lab technician like me is far too busy here, for one thing,"
she assured him, her happy tone bridging the distance. "We came this far
with a well-armed freight caravan, in good passenger quarters. If we
went on, I suppose it would be the same... Anyway, for years you didn't
worry much about me. Why now, Frank?"

"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I considered Earth
safe--instinctively."

But he was right in the first place. It _was_ a mystery--something to do
with the startling news that she was on the way, that closer friendship
was pending. The impulse to go meet her had been his first, almost
thoughtless impulse.

He was still glad that she wasn't out between Mars and the Belt, where
disaster had once hit him hard. But now he wondered if the Survey
Station was any better for anybody, even though it was reputed to be
quite secure.

The caravan he rode approached his destination no closer than ten
million miles. Taking cautious note of radar data which indicated that
space all around was safely empty, he cast off in his Archer with a
small, new, professional-type bubb packed across his hips. Inside his
helmet he lighted a cigarette--quite an unusual luxury.

It took a long time to reach Phobos. They gave him shots there--new
preventative medicine that was partially effective against the viruses
of Mars. Descent in the winged rocket was rough. But then he was gliding
with a sibilant whistle through a natural atmosphere, again. Within
minutes he was at the Station--low, dusty domes, many of them deserted,
now, at the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind gauge,
tractors, auto-jeeps, several helicopters.

He stepped down with his gear. Mars was all around him: A few
ground-clinging growths nearby--harmless, locally evolved vegetation.
Distant, coppery cliffs reflecting the setting sun. Ancient excavations
notched them. Dun desert to the east, with little plumes of dust
blowing. Through his Archer--a necessary garment here not only because
the atmosphere was only one-tenth as dense as Earth-air and poor in
oxygen, but because of the microscopic dangers it bore--Nelsen could
hear the faint sough of the wind.

The thirty-eight percent of terrestrial gravity actually seemed strong
to him now, and made him awkward, as he turned and looked west. Perhaps
two miles off, past a barbed-wire fence and what must be an old tractor
trail of the hopeful days of colonization, he saw the blue-green edge of
Syrtis Major, the greatest of the thickets, with here and there a
jutting spur of it projecting toward him along a gully. Nelsen's hide
tingled. But his first glimpse was handicapped by distance. He saw only
an expanse of low shagginess that might have been scrub growths of any
kind.

Dug into the salt-bearing ground at intervals, he knew, were the fire
weapons ready to throw oxygen and synthetic napalm--jellied gasoline.
Never yet had they been discharged, along this defense line. But you
could never be sure just what might be necessary here.

A man of about thirty had approached. "I meet the new arrivals," he
said. "If you'll come along with me, Mr. Nelsen..."

He was dark, and medium large, and he had a genial way. He looked like a
hopper--an asteroid-miner--the tough, level-headed kind that adjusts to
space and keeps his balance.

"Name's Ed Huth," he continued, as they walked to the reception dome.
"Canadian. Good, international crowd here--however long you mean to
stay. Most interesting frontier in the solar system, too. Probably
you've heard most of the rules and advice. But here's a paper. Refresh
your memory by reading it over as soon as you can. There is one thing
which I am required to show everybody who comes here. Inside this peek
box. You are instructed to take a good look."

Huth's geniality had vanished.

The metal box was a yard high, and twice as long and wide. It stood,
like a memorial, before the reception dome entrance. A light shone
beyond the glass-covered slot, as Nelsen bent to peer.

He had seen horror before now. He had seen a pink mist dissolve in the
sunshine as a man in armor out in the Belt was hit by an explosive
missile, his blood spraying and boiling. Besides, he had read up on the
thickets of Mars, watched motion pictures, heard Gimp Hines' stories of
his brief visit here. So, at first, he could be almost casual about what
he saw in the peek box. There were many ghastly ways for a man to die.

Even the thicket plant in the box seemed dead, though Nelsen knew that
plant successors to the original Martians had the rugged power of
revival. This one showed the usual paper-dry whorls or leaves, and the
usual barrel-body, perhaps common to arid country growths, everywhere.
Scattered over the barrel, between the spines, were glinting
specks--vegetable, light-sensitive cells developed into actual visual
organs. The plant had the usual tympanic pods of its kind--a band of
muscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior--by which it could
make buzzing sounds. Nelsen knew that, like any Earthly green plant, it
produced oxygen, but that, instead of releasing it, it stored the gas in
spongy compartments within its horny shell, using it to support an
animal-like tissue combustion to keep its vitals from freezing during
the bitterly frigid nights.

Nelsen also knew that deeper within the thing was a network of whitish
pulp, expanded at intervals to form little knobs. Sectioned, under a
microscope, they would look like fibred masses of animal or human nerve
and brain cells, except that, chemically, they were starch and cellulose
rather than protein.

Worst to see was the rigid clutch of monster's tactile organs, which
grew from the barrel's crown. It was like a powerful man struggling to
uproot a rock, or a bear or an octopus crushing an enemy. It was
dark-hole drama, like something from another galaxy. Like some horribly
effective piece of sculpture, the tableau in the box preserved the last
gasp of an incautious youth in armor.

The tendrils of the thicket plant were furred with erect spines of a
shiny, russet color. They were so fine that they looked almost soft. But
Nelsen was aware that they were sharper than the hypodermic needles they
resembled--in another approach to science. Now, Nelsen felt the tingling
revulsion and hatred.

"Of course you know that you don't have to get caught like that poor
bloke did," Huth said dryly. "Just not to disinfect the outside of your
Archer well enough and then leave it near you, indoors, is sufficient.
I was here before there was any trouble. When it came, it was a
shambles..."

Huth eyed Nelsen for a moment, then continued on another tack.
"Biology... Given the whole universe to experiment in, I suppose you can
never know what it will come up with--or what is possible. These
devils--you get to hate them in your sleep. If their flesh--or their
methods--were something like ours, as was the case with the original
Martians or the people of the Asteroid Planet, it wouldn't seem so bad.
Still, they make you wonder: What would you do, if, in your own way, you
could think and observe, but were rooted to the ground; if you were
denied the animal ability of rapid motion, if you didn't have hands with
which to fashion tools or build apparatus, if fire was something you
could scarcely use?..."

Nelsen smiled. "I _am_ wondering," he said. "I promise to do a lot more
of it as soon as I get squared away. I could inflate my bubb, and sleep
in the yard in it, if I had to. Then, as usual, off the Earth, you'll
expect me to earn my breathing air and keep, after a couple of days,
whether I can pay instead or not. That's fine with me, of course.
There's another matter which I'd like to discuss, but that can be
later."

"No sleeping out," Huth laughed. "That's just where people get careless.
There are plenty of quarters available since the retreat of settlers
almost emptied this world of terrestrial intrusion--except for us here
and the die-hard desert rats, and the new, screwball adventurers... By
the way, if it ever becomes important, the deserts are safe--at least
from what you just saw--as you probably know..."

Nelsen passed through an airlock, where live steam and a special
silicone oil accomplished the all-important disinfection of his Archer,
his bubb, and the outside of his small, sealed baggage roll. Armor and
bubb he left racked with rows of others.

It wasn't till he got into the reception dome lounge that he saw Nance
Codiss. She didn't rush at him. Reserve had dropped over them both again
as if in reconsideration of a contact made important too suddenly. He
clasped her fingers, then just stood looking at her. Lately, they had
exchanged a few pictures.

"Your photographs don't lie, Nance," he said at last.

"Yours do, Frank," she answered with complete poise. "You look a lot
less grim and tired."

"Wait," he told her. "I'll be right back..."

He went with Ed Huth to ditch his roll in his sleeping cubicle, get
cleaned up and change his clothes.

She _was_ beautiful, she had grave moods, she was wearing his fabulous
bracelet--if only not to offend him. But when he returned, he met two of
the girls who had come out to Mars with her--a nurse and another lab
technician. They were the bubbly type, full of bravado and giggles for
their strange, new surroundings. For a moment he felt far too old at
twenty-four for Nance's twenty. He wondered regretfully if her being
here was no more than part of his excuse for getting away from the Belt
and from the sense of ultimate human disaster building up.

But much of his feeling of separation from her disappeared as they sat
alone in the lounge, talking--first about Jarviston, then about here.
Nance had available information about the thickets pretty well down pat.

"You can't keep those plants alive here at the Station, Frank," she said
quietly. "They make study difficult by dying. It's as if they knew that
they couldn't win here. So they retreat--to keep their secrets. But Dr.
Pacetti, our head of Medical Research, says that we can never know that
they won't find a way to attack us directly. That's what the waiting
napalm line is for. I don't think he is exaggerating."

"Why do you say that?" Nelsen asked.

He was encouraging her, of course. But he wasn't being patronizing.
Frost tingled in his nerves. He wanted to know her version.

"I'll show you the little museum we have," she replied, her eyes
widening slightly. "This is probably old hat to you--but it's weird--it
gives you the creeps..."

He followed her along a covered causeway to another dome. In a gallery
there, a series of dry specimens were set up, inside sealed boxes made
of clear plastic.

The first display was centered around a tapered brass tube--perhaps one
of the barrels of an antique pair of fieldglasses. Wrapping it was a
spiny brown tendril from which grew two sucker-like organs, shaped like
acorn tops. One was firmly attached to the metal. The other had been
pulled free, its original position on the barrel marked by a circular
area of corrosion. The face of the detached sucker was also shown--a
honeycomb structure of waxy vegetable tissue, detailed with thousands of
tiny ducts and hairlike feelers.

"Some settler dropped the piece of brass out on a trail in Syrtis
Major," Nance explained. "Later, it was found like this. Brass is
something that people have almost stopped using. So, it was new to
_them_. They wouldn't have been interested in magnesium, aluminum, or
stainless steel anymore. The suckers aren't a usual part of them either.
But the suckers grow--for a special purpose, Dr. Pacetti believes. A
test--perhaps an analysis. They exude an acid, to dissolve a little of
the metal. It's like a human chemist working. Only, perhaps,
better--more directly--with specialized feelers and sensing organs."

Nance's quiet voice had a slight, awed quaver at the end.

Frank Nelsen nodded. He had examined printed pictures and data before
this. But here the impact was far more real and immediate; the impact of
strange minds with an approach of their own was more emphatic.

"What else?" he urged.

They stood before another sealed case containing a horny, oval pod, cut
open. It had closed around a lump of greenish stone.

"Malachite," Nance breathed. "One kind of copper ore. _They_ reduced it,
extracted some of the pure metal. See all the little reddish specks
shining? It is pretty well established that the process is something
like electroplating. There's a dissolving acid--then a weak electric
current--from a kind of battery... Oh, nobody should laugh, Frank--Dr.
Pacetti keeps pointing out that there are electric eels on Earth, with
specialized muscle-tissue that acts as an electric cell... But this is
somewhat different. Don't ask me exactly how it functions--I only heard
our orientation lecture, while we toured this museum. But see those
small compartments in the thick shells of the pod--with the membranes
separating them? All of them contained fluids--some acid, others
alkaline. Mixed in with the cellulose of the membranes, you can see both
silvery and reddish specks--as if _they_ had to incorporate both a
conductor and a difference of metals to get a current. At least, that
was what was suggested in the lecture..."

Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss moved on from display case to display
case, each of which showed another kind of pod cut in half. The
interiors were all different and all complicated... Membranes with a
faint, metallic sheen--laminated or separated by narrow air spaces as in
a capacitor, for instance... Balls of massed fibre, glinting... Curious,
spiral formations of waxy tissue...

"They use electricity as a minor kind of defense," Nance went on, her
tone still low with suppressed excitement that was close to dread. "We
know that some of them can give you a shock--if you're fool enough to
get so close that you can touch them. And they do emit radio impulses on
certain wavelengths. Signals--communication...? As for the rest, perhaps
you'd better do your own guessing, Frank. But the difference between us
and them seems to be that we _make_ our apparatus. They _grow_ them,
_build_ them--with their own living tissue cells--in a way that must be
under their constant, precise control. I suppose they even work from a
carefully thought-out design--a kind of cryptic blueprint... Go along
with the idea--or not--as you choose. But our experts suspect that much
of what we have here represents research apparatus--physical, chemical,
electrical. That _they_ may get closer to understanding the ultimate
structure of matter than we can, because their equipment is part of
themselves, in which they can develop senses that we don't possess...
Well, I'll skip any more of that. Because the best--or the worst--is
still coming. Right here, Frank..."

The case showed several small, urn-like growths, sectioned like the
other specimens.

Frank Nelsen grinned slightly. "All right--let me tell it," he said.
"Because this is something I really paid attention to! Like you imply,
their equipment is alive. So they work best with life--viruses, germs,
vegetable-allergy substances. These are their inventing, developing and
brewing bottles--for the numerous strains of Syrtis Fever virus. The
living molecule chains split off from the inner tissue walls of the
bottles, and grow and multiply in the free fluid. At least, that's how I
read it."

"And that is where my lab job begins, Frank," she told him. "Helping
develop anti-virus shots--testing them on bits of human tissue, growing
in a culture bath. An even partially effective anti-virus isn't found
easily. And when it is, another virus strain will soon appear, and the
doctors have to start over... Oh, the need isn't as great, any more, as
when the Great Rush away from Mars was on. There are only half a dozen
really sick people in the hospital now. Late comers and snoopers who got
careless or curious. You've got to remember that the virus blows off the
thickets like invisible vapor. There's one guy from Idaho--Jimmy--James
Scanlon. Come along. I'll show you, Frank..."

He lay behind plastic glass, in a small cubicle. A red rash, with the
pattern of frostwork on a Minnesota windowpane in January, was across
his lean, handsome face. Maybe he was twenty--Nance's age. His bloodshot
eyes stared at terrors that no one else could see.

Nance called softly through the thin infection barrier. "Jimmy!"

He moaned a little. "Francy..."

"High fever, Frank," Nance whispered. "Typical Syrtis. He wants to be
home--with his girl. I guess you know that nostalgia--yearning terribly
for old, familiar surroundings--is a major symptom. It's like a command
from _them_--to get out of Mars. The red rash is something extra he
picked up. An allergy... Oh, we think he'll survive. Half of them now
do. He's big and strong. Right now, even the nurses don't go in there,
except in costumes that are as infection-tight as armor. Later on, when
the fever dwindles to chronic intermittence, it will no longer be
contagious. Even so, the new laws on Earth won't let him return there
for a year. I don't know whether such laws are fair or not. We've got a
hundred here, who were sick, and are now stranded and waiting, working
at small jobs. Others have gone to the Belt--which seems terrible for
someone not quite well. I hope that Jimmy bears up all right--he's such
a kid... Let's get out of here..."

Her expression was gently maternal. Or maybe it was something more?

Back in the lounge, she asked, "What will you do here, Frank?"

"Whatever it is, there is one thing I want to include," he answered. "I
want to try to find out just what happened to Mitch Storey."

"Natch. I remember him. So I looked the incident up. He disappeared,
deep in Syrtis Major, over three years ago. He had carried a sick
settler in--on foot. He always seemed lucky or careful, or smart. After
he got lost, his wife--a nurse from here whose name had been Selma
Washington--went looking for him. She never was found either."

"Oh?" Nelsen said in mild startlement.

"Yes... Talk to Ed Huth. There still are helicopter patrols--watching
for signs of a long list of missing people, and keeping tabs on late
comers who might turn out to be screwballs. You look as though you might
be Ed's type for that kind of work... I'll have to go, now, Frank. Duty
in half an hour..."

Huth was grinning at him a little later. "This department doesn't like
men who have a vanished friend, Nelsen," he said. "It makes their
approach too heroically personal. On the other hand, some of our lads
seem underzealous, nowadays... If you can live up to your successful
record in the Belt, maybe you're the right balance. Let's try you."

For a week, about all Nelsen did was ride along with Huth in the heli.
At intervals, he'd call, "Mitch... Mitch Storey...!" into his
helmet-phone. But, of course, that was no use.

He couldn't say that he didn't see Mars--from a safe altitude of two
thousand feet: The vast, empty deserts where, fairly safe from the
present dominant form of Martian life, a few adventurers and
archeologists still rummaged among the rust heaps of climate control and
other machines, and among the blasted debris of glazed ceramic
cities--still faintly tainted with radioactivity--where the original
inhabitants had died. The straight ribbons of thicket growths, crossing
even the deserts, carrying in their joined, hollow roots the irrigation
water of the otherwise mythical "canals." The huge south polar cap of
hoarfrost melting, blackening the soil with brief moisture, while the
frost line retreated toward the highlands. Syrtis, itself, where the
trails, once burned out with oxygen and gasoline-jelly to permit the
passage of vehicles, had again become completely overgrown--who could
hope to stamp out that devilishly hardy vegetation, propagating by means
of millions of windblown spores, with mere fire? The broken-down trains
of tractors and trailers, now almost hidden. The stellene garden domes
that had flattened. Here were the relics left by people who had sought
to spread out to safety, to find old goals of freedom from fear.

Several times in Syrtis, Huth and Nelsen descended, using a barren
hillock or an isolated spot of desert as a landing area. That was when
Nelsen first heard the buzzing of the growths.

Twice, working warily with machetes, and holding their flame weapons
ready, they chopped armored mummies from enwrapping tendrils, while
little eye cells glinted at them balefully, and other tendrils bent
slowly toward them. They searched out the space-fitness cards, which
bore old dates, and addresses of next of kin.

In a few more days, Nelsen was flying the 'copter. Then he was out on
his own, watching, searching. For a couple of weeks he hangared the heli
at once, after each patrol, and Nance always was there to meet him as he
did so.

Inevitably the evening came when he said, "We could fly out again,
Nance. For an hour or two. It doesn't break any rules."

Those evening rides, high over Syrtis Major, toward the setting sun,
became an every other day custom, harmless in itself. A carefully kept
nuclear-battery motor didn't conk; the vehicle could almost fly without
guidance. It was good to look down at the blue-green shagginess,
below... Familiarity bred, not contempt, but a decline of dread to the
point where it became a pleasant thrill--an overtone to the process of
falling in love. Otherwise, perhaps they led each other on, into
incaution. Out in the lonely fastnesses of Mars they seemed to find the
sort of peace and separation from danger on the hectic Earth that the
settlers had sought here.

"We always pass over that same hill," Nance said during one of their
flights. "It must have been a beautiful little island in the ancient
ocean, when there was that much water. Now it belongs to us, Frank."

"It's barren--we could land," Nelsen suggested quickly.

They visited the hill a dozen times safely, breaking no printed rule.
But maybe they shouldn't have come so often to that same place. In life
there is always a risk--which is food for a fierce soul. Frank Nelsen
and Nance Codiss were fierce souls.

They'd stand by the heli and look out over Syrtis, their gloved fingers
entwined. If they couldn't kiss, here, through their helmets, that was
merely comic pathos--another thing to laugh and be happy over.

"Our wind-blown hill," Nance chuckled on that last evening. "Looking
down over a culture, a history--maybe arguments, lawsuits, jokes,
parties; gossip too, for all we know--disguised as a huge briar patch
that makes funny noises."

"Shut up--I love you," Nelsen gruffed.

"Shut up yourself--it's you I love," she answered.

The little sun was half sunk behind the Horizon. The 'copter was only a
hundred feet away, along the hillcrest. That was when it happened. Two
dull, plopping sounds came almost together.

If a thinking animal can use the pressure of a confined gas to propel
small missiles, is there any reason why other intelligences can't do the
same? From two bottle-like pods the clusters of darts--or long, sharp
thorns--were shot. Only a few of them struck their targets. Fewer,
still, found puncturable areas and struck through silicone rubber and
fine steelwire cloth into flesh. Penetration was not deep, but deep
enough.

Nance screamed. Nelsen wasn't at all sure that he didn't scream himself
as the first anguish dizzied and half blinded him.

From the start it was really too late. Nelsen was as hardy and
determined as any. He tried to get Nance to the 'copter. Less than
halfway, she crumpled. With a savage effort of will he managed to drag
her a few yards, before his legs refused to obey him, or support him.

His blood carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it would have
carried a cobra's venom. _They_ probably could have made such
protein-poisons, too; but they had never used them against men, no doubt
because something that could spread and infect others was better.

For a while, as the black, starshot night closed in, Nelsen knew, or
remembered, nothing at all--unless the mental distortions were too
horrible. Then he seemed to be in a pit of stinking, viscous fluid,
alive with stringy unknowns that were boring into him... Unreachable in
another universe was a town called Jarviston. He yelled till his wind
was gone.

He had a half-lucid moment in which he knew it was night, and understood
that he had a raging fever. He was still clinging to Nance, who clung to
him. So instinct still worked. He saw that they had blundered--its black
bulk was visible against the stars. Phobos hadn't risen; Deimos, the
farther moon, was too small to furnish appreciable light.

Something touched him from behind, and he recoiled, pushing Nance back.
He yanked the machete from his belt, and struck blindly... Oh,
_no!_--you didn't get caught like this--not usually, he told himself.
Not in their actual grip! They were too slow--you could always dodge! It
was only when you were near something not properly disinfected that you
got Syrtis Fever, which was the worst that could happen--wasn't it...?

He heard an excited rhythm in the buzzing. Now he remembered his
shoulder-lamp, fumbled to switch it on, failed, and stumbled a few steps
with Nance toward the hill. Something caught his feet--then hers. Trying
to get her free, he dropped his machete...

Huth's voice spoke in his helmet-phone. "We hear you, Nelsen! Hold
out... We'll be there in forty minutes..."

Yeah--forty minutes.

"It's--it's silly to be so scared, Frankie..." he heard Nance stammer
almost apologetically. Dear Nance...

Screaming, he kicked out again and again with his heavy boots, and got
both her and himself loose.

It wasn't any good. A shape loomed near them. A thing that must have
sprung from _them_--someway. A huge, zombie form--the ugliest part of
this night of anguish and distortion. But he was sure that it was real.

The thing struck him in the stomach. Then there was a biting pain in his
shoulder...

There wasn't any more, just then. But this wasn't quite the end, either.
The jangled impressions were like split threads of consciousness,
misery-wracked and tenuous. They were widely separated. His brain seemed
to crack into a million needle-pointed shards, that made no sense except
to indicate the passage of time. A month? A century...?

It seemed that he was always struggling impossibly to get himself and
Nance somewhere--out of hot, noisesome holes of suffocation, across
deserts, up endless walls, and past buzzing sounds that were mixed
incongruously with strange harmonica music that seemed to express all
time and space... He could never succeed though the need was desperate.
But sometimes there was a coolness answering his thirst, or rubbed into
his burning skin, and he would seem to sleep... Often, voices told him
things, but he always forgot...

It wasn't true that he came out of the hot fog suddenly, but it seemed
that he did. He was sitting in dappled sunshine in an ordinary lawn
chair of tubular magnesium with a back and bottom of gaudy fabric. Above
him was a narrow, sealed roof of stellene. The stone walls showed the
beady fossils of prehistoric Mars. More than probably, these chambers
had been cut in the living rock, by the ancients.

Reclining in another lawn chair beside his was Nance, her eyes closed,
her face thin and pale. He was frightened--until he remembered,
somehow, that she was nearly as well as he was. Beyond her was a
doorway, leading into what seemed a small, modern kitchen. There was a
passage to a small, neat garden, where Earthly vegetables and flowers
grew. It was ceiled with stellene; its walls were solid rock. Looking up
through the transparent roof above him, he saw how a thin mesh of fuzzy
tendrils and whorls masked this strange Shangri-la.

Nelsen closed his eyes, and thought back. Now he remembered most of what
he had been told. "Mitch!" he called quietly, so as not to awaken Nance.
"Hey, Mitch...! Selma...!"

Mitch Storey was there in a moment--dressed in dungarees and work shirt
like he used to be, but taller, even leaner, and unsmiling.

Nelsen got up. "Thanks, Mitch," he said.

Their voices stayed low and intense.

"For nothing, Frank. I'm damned glad to see you, but you still shouldn't
have come nosing. 'Cause--I told you why. Looking for you, Huth burned
out more than five square miles. And if folks get too smart and too
curious, it won't be any good for what's here..."

Nelsen felt angry and exasperated. But he had a haunting thought about a
lanky colored kid in Jarviston, Minnesota. A guy with a dream--or
perhaps a prescient glimpse of his own future.

"What's a pal supposed to do?" he growled. "For a helluva long time
you've answered nobody--though everyone in the Bunch must have tried
beaming you."

"Sure, Frank... Blame, from me, would be way out of line. I heard you
guys lots of times. But it was best to get lost--maybe help keep the
thickets like they are for as long as possible... A while back, I began
picking up your voice in my phones again. I figured you were heading for
trouble when you kept coming with your girl to that same hill. So I was
around, like I told you before... Sorry I had to hit you and give you
the needle, but you were nuts--gone with Syrtis. Getting you back here,
without Huth spotting the old heli I picked up once at a deserted
settlers' camp was real tough going. I had to land, hide it and wait,
four or five times. And you were both plenty sick. But there are a few
medical gimmicks I learned from the thickets--better than those at the
Station."

"You've done all right for yourself here, haven't you, Mitch?" Nelsen
remarked with a dash of mockery. "All the modern conveniences--in the
middle of the forbidden wilds of Syrtis Major."

"Sure, Frank--'cause maybe I'm selfish. Though it's just stuff the
settlers left behind. Anyway, it wasn't so good at the start. I was
careful, but I got the fever, too. Light. Then I fell--broke my leg--out
there. I thought sure I was finished when they got hold of me. But I
just lay there, playing on my mouth organ--an old hymn--inside my
helmet. Maybe it was the music--they must have felt the radio impulses
of my tooting before. Or else they knew, somehow, that I was on their
side--that I figured they were too important just to disappear and that
I meant to do anything I could, short of killing, to keep them all
right... Nope, I wouldn't say that they were so friendly, but they might
have thought I'd be useful--a guinea-pig to study and otherwise. For all
I know, examining my body may have helped them improve their weapons...
Anyhow--you won't believe this--'cause it's sort of fantastic--but you
know they work best with living tissue. They fixed that leg, bound it
tight with tendrils, went through the steel cloth of my Archer with
hollow thorns. The bone knit almost completely in four days. And the
fever broke. Then they let me go. Selma was already out looking for me.
When I found her, she had the fever, too. But I guess we're immune now."

Storey's quiet voice died away.

"What are you going to do, Mitch? Just stay here for good?"

"What else--if I can? This is better than anything I remember. Peaceful,
too. If they study me, I study them--not like a real scientist--but by
just having them close around. I even got to know some of their buzzing
talk. Maybe I'll have to be their ambassador to human folks, sometime.
They _are_ from the planets of the stars, Frank. Sirius, I think. Tough
little spores can be ejected from one atmosphere, and drift in space for
millions of years... They arrived after the first Martians were extinct.
Now that you're here, Frank, I wish you'd stay. But that's no good.
Somebody lost always makes people poke around."

Nelsen might have argued a few points. But for one thing, he felt too
tired. "I'll buy it all, your way, Mitch," he said. "I hope Nance and I
can get out of here in a couple more days. Maybe I shouldn't have run
out on the Belt. Can't run--thoughts follow you. But now--dammit--I want
to go home!"

"That's regular, Frank. 'Cause you've got Syrtis. Chronic,
now--intermittent. But it'll fade. Same with your girl. Meanwhile, they
won't let you go Earthside, but you'll be okay. I'll fly you out, close
enough to the Station to get back, any morning before daylight, that you
pick... Only, you won't tell, will you, Frank?"

"No--I promise--if you think secrecy makes any difference.
Otherwise--thanks for everything... By the way--do you ever listen in
on outside news?"

"Enough. Still quiet... And a fella named Miguel Ramos--with
nerve-controlled clamps for hands--got a new, special bubb and took off
for Pluto."

"No! Damn fool... Almost as loony as you are, Mitch."

"Less... Wake up, Nance. Dinner... Chicken--raised right here..."

That same afternoon, Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss sat in the garden.
"If I blur, just hold me tight, Frankie," she said. "Everything is still
too strange to quite get a grip on--yet... But I'm _not_ going home,
Frank--not even when it is allowed. I set out--I'm sticking--I'm not
turning tail. It's what people have got to do--in space more than
ever..."

Even when the seizure of fever came, and the sweat gathered on her lips,
and her eyes went wild, she gritted her teeth and just clung to him. She
had spunk--admirable, if perhaps destructive. "Love yuh," Frank kept
saying. "Love yuh, Sweetie..."

Two days later, before the frigid dawn, they saw the last of Mitch
Storey and his slender, beautiful wife with her challenging brown eyes.

"Be careful that you do right for Mitch and--these _folks_," she warned
almost commandingly as the old heli landed in the desert a few miles
from the Station. "What would you do--if outsiders came blundering into
your world by the hundreds, making trails, killing you with fire? At
first, _they_ didn't even fight back."

The question was ancient but valid. In spite of his experiences, Nelsen
agreed with the logic and the justice. "We'll make up a story, Selma,"
he said solemnly.

Mitch looked anxious. "Human people will find a way, won't they, Frank?"
he asked. "To win, to come to Mars and live, I mean--to change
everything. Sure--some will be sympathetic. But when there's practical
pressure--need--danger--economics...?"

"I don't know, Mitch," Nelsen answered in the same tone as before. "Your
thickets do have a pretty good defense."

But in his heart he suspected that fierce human persistence couldn't be
stopped--_as long as there were humans left_. Mitch and his star folk
couldn't withdraw from the mainstream of competition--inherent in
life--that was spreading again across the solar system. They could only
stand their ground, take their fearful chances, be part of it.

One of the last things Mitch said, was, "Got any cigarettes, Frank?
Selma likes one, once in a while."

"Sure. Three packs here inside my Archer. Mighty small hospitality gift,
Mitch..."

After the 'copter drifted away, it seemed that a curtain drew over
Nelsen's mind, blurring the whole memory. It was as though _they_ had
planned that. It was almost as though Mitch, and Selma, as he had just
seen them, were just another mind-fantasy of the Heebie-Jeebie Planet,
created by its present masters.

"Should we believe it?" Nance whispered.

"My cigarettes are gone," Frank told her.

At the Survey Station they got weary looks from Ed Huth. "I guess I
picked a wrong man, Nelsen," he said.

"It looks as though you did, Ed," Frank replied. "I'm really sorry."

They got worse hell from a little doctor from Italy, whose name was
Padetti. They were asked a lot of questions. They fibbed some, but not
entirely.

"We sort of blanked out, Doctor," Nance told him. "I suppose we spent
most of our time in the desert, living in our Archers. There were the
usual distorted hallucinations of Syrtis Fever. A new strain, I
suspect... Four months gone? Oh, no...!"

She must have had a time evading his questions for the next month, while
she worked, again, in the lab. Maybe he did divine half of the truth, at
last. Maybe he even was sympathetic toward the thickets that he was
trying to defeat.

Nelsen wasn't allowed to touch another helicopter. During that month,
between brief but violent seizures of the fever, he was employed as a
maintenance mechanic.

Then the news came. There had been an emergency call from Pallastown.
Rescue units were to be organized, and rocketed out in high-velocity
U.N.S.F. and U.S.S.F bubbs. There had been sabotage, violence. The Town
was three-quarters gone, above the surface. Planned attack or--almost
worse--merely the senseless result of space-poisoned men kicking off the
lid in a spree of hell-raising humor and fun?

Nelsen was bitter. But he also felt the primitive excitement--almost an
eagerness. That was the savage paradox in life.

"You still have the dregs of Syrtis Fever," a recruiting physician told
him. "But you know the Belt. That makes a big difference... All
right--you're going..."

Nance Codiss didn't have that experience. Her lab background wasn't
enough. So she was stuck, on Mars.

Nelsen had been pestering her to marry him. Now, in a corner of the
crowded lounge, he tried again.

She shook her head. "You'd still have to leave me, Frank," she told him.
"Because that's the way strong people _have_ to be--when there's
trouble to be met. Let's wait. Let's know a little better where we're
at--please, darling. I'll be all right. Contact me when you can..."

Her tone was low and tender and unsteady. He hugged her close.

Soon, he was aboard a GO-rocket, shooting up to Phobos to join the
assembling rescue team. He wondered if this was the beginning of the
end...




VIII


Frank Nelsen missed the first shambles at Pallastown, of course, since
even at high speed, the rescue unit with which he came did not arrive
until days after the catastrophe.

There had been hardly any warning, since the first attack had sprung
from the sub-levels of the city itself.

A huge tank of liquid oxygen, and another tank of inflammable synthetic
hydrocarbons to be used in the manufacture of plastics, had been
simultaneously ruptured by charges of explosive, together with the
heavy, safety partition between them. The resulting blast and fountain
of fire had jolted even the millions of tons of Pallas' mass several
miles from its usual orbit.

The sack of the town had begun at once, from within, even before chunks
of asteroid material, man-accelerated and--aimed, had begun to splatter
blossoms of incandescence into the confusion of deflating domes and
dying inhabitants. Other vandal bands had soon landed from space.

The first hours of trying to regain any sort of order, during the
assault and after it was finally beaten off, must have been heroic
effort almost beyond conception. Local disaster units, helped by hoppers
and citizens, had done their best. Then many had turned to pursuit and
revenge.

After Nelsen's arrival, his memory of the interval of acute emergency
could have been broken down into a series of pictures, in which he was
often active.

First, the wreckage, which he helped to pick up, like any of the others.
Pallastown had been like froth on a stone, a castle on a floating,
golden crag. It had been a flimsy, hastily-built mushroom city, with a
beautiful, tawdry splendor that had seemed out of place, a target
shining for thousands of miles.

Haw, haw...! Nelsen could almost hear the coarse laughter of the Jolly
Lads, as they broke it up, robbed it, raped it--because they both
sneered at its effeteness, and missed what it represented to them...
Nelsen remembered very well how a man's attitudes could be warped while
he struggled for mere survival in an Archer drifting in space.

Yet even as he worked with the others, to put up temporary domes and to
gather the bloated dead, the hatred arose in him, and was strengthened
by the fury and grief in the grim, strong faces around him. To exist
where it was, Pallastown could not be as soft as it seemed. And to the
hoppers--the rugged, level-headed ones who deserved the name--it had
meant much, though they had visited it for only a few days of fun, now
and then.

The Jolly Lads had been routed. Some must have fled chuckling and
cursing almost sheepishly, like infants the magnitude of whose mischief
has surpassed their intention, and has awed and frightened them, at
last. They had been followed, even before the various late-coming space
forces could get into action.

Nelsen overheard words that helped complete the pictures:

"I'll get them... They had my wife..."

"This was planned--you know where..."

It was planned, all right. But if Ceres, the Tovie colony, had actually
been the instigator, there was evidence that the scheme had gotten out
of hand. The excitement of destruction had spread. Stories came back
that Ceres had been attacked, too.

"I killed a man, Frank--with this pre-Asteroidal knife. He was after
Helen and my son..."

This was timid David Lester talking, awed at himself, proud, but
curiously ashamed. This made another picture. By luck the Lesters lived
in the small above-the-surface portion of Pallastown that had not been
seriously damaged.

Frank Nelsen also killed, during a trip to Post One of the KRNH
Enterprises, to get more stellene and other materials to expand the
temporary encampments for the survivors. He killed two fleeing men
coldly and at a distance, because they did not answer his hail. The
shreds of their bodies and the loot they had been carrying were
scattered to drift in the vacuum, adding another picture of retribution
to thousands like it.

Belt Parnay was the name of the leader whom everybody really wanted to
get. Belt Parnay--another Fessler, another Fanshaw. That was a curious
thing. There was another name and face; but as far as could be told, the
personality was very similar. It was as if, out of the darker side of
human nature, a kind of reincarnation would always take place.

They didn't get Parnay. Inevitably, considering the enormity of space,
many of the despoilers of Pallastown escaped. The shrewdest, the most
experienced, the most willing to shout and lead and let others do the
dangerous work, had the advantage. For they also knew how to run and
hide and be prudently quiet. Parnay was one of these.

Some captives were recovered. Others were found, murdered. Fortunately,
Pallastown was still largely a man's city. But pursuit and revenge still
went on...

Post One was intact. Art Kuzak had surrounded it with a cordon of tough
and angry asteroid-hoppers. It was the same with the other posts, except
Five and Nine, which were wiped out.

"Back at last, eh, Nelsen?" Art roared angrily, as soon as Frank had
entered his office.

"A fact we should accept, not discuss," Nelsen responded dryly. "You
know the things we need."

"Um-hmm--Nelsen. To rescue and restore Pallastown--when it's pure
nonsense, only inviting another assault! When we know that dispersal is
the only answer. The way things are, everywhere, the whole damned human
race needs to be dispersed--if some of it is to survive!"

It made another picture--Art Kuzak, the old friend, gone somewhat too
big for his oversized britches, perhaps... No doubt Art had had to put
aside some grandiose visions, considering the turn that events had
taken: Whole asteroids moved across the distance, and put into orbit
around the Earth, so that their mineral wealth could be extracted more
conveniently. Space resorts established for tourists; new sports made
possible by zero-gravity, invented and advertised. Art Kuzak had the
gift of both big dreaming and of practice. He'd talked of such things,
before.

Nelsen's smirk was wry. "Dispersal for survival. I agree," he said.
"When they tried to settle Mars, it was being mentioned. Also, long
before that. Your wisdom is not new, Art. It wasn't followed perhaps
because people are herding animals by instinct. Anyhow, our side has to
hold what it has _really_ got--one-fourth of Pallastown above the
surface, and considerably more underground, including shops,
installations, and seventy per cent of its skilled inhabitants,
determined to stay in the Belt after the others were killed or wounded,
or ran away. Unless you've quit claiming to be a practical man, Art,
you'll have to go along with helping them. You know what kind of
materials and equipment are needed, and how much we can supply, better
than I do. Or do I have to withdraw my fraction of the company in
goods? We'll take up the dispersal problem as soon as possible."

Art Kuzak could only sigh heavily, grin a lopsided grin, and produce.
Soon a great caravan of stuff was on the move.

There was another picture: Eileen Sands, the old Queen of Serene in a
not-yet-forgotten song, sitting on a lump of yellow alloy splashed up
from the surface of Pallas, where a chunk of mixed metal and stone had
struck at a speed of several miles per second, fusing the native alloy
and destroying her splendid _Second Stop_ utterly in a flash of
incandescence. Back in Archer, she looked almost as she used to look at
Hendricks'. Her smile was rueful.

"Shucks, I'm all right, Frank," she said. "Even if Insurance, with so
many disaster-claims, can't pay me--which they probably still can. The
boys'll keep needing entertainment, if it's only in a stellene space
tent. They won't let me just sit... For two bits, though, I'd move into
a nice, safe orbit, out of the Belt and on the other side of the sun
from the Earth, and build myself a retreat and retire. I'd become a
spacewoman, like I wanted to, in the first place."

"I'll bet," Nelsen joshed. "Otherwise, what have you heard and seen?
There's a certain fella..."

Right away, she thought he meant Ramos. "The damfool--why ask me,
Frank?" she sniffed, her expression sour and sad. "How long has he been
gone again, now? As usual he was proposing--for the first few days after
he set out. After that, there were a few chirps of messages. Then
practically nothing. Anyway, how long does it take to get way out to
Pluto and back, even if a whole man can have the luck to make it. And is
there much more than half of him left...? For two bits I'd--ah--skip
it!"

Nelsen smiled with half of his mouth. "I wanted to know about Ramos,
too, Eileen. Thanks. But I was talking about Tiflin."

"Umhmm--you're right. He and Pal Igor were both around at my place about
an hour before we were hit. I called him something worse than a bad
omen. He was edgy--almost like he used to be. He said that, one of these
days--be cavalier--I was going to get mine. He and Igor eeled away
before my customers could break their necks."

Nelsen showed his teeth. "Thanks again. I wondered," he said.

He stayed in Pallastown until, however patched it looked, it was
functioning as the center of the free if rough-and-tumble part of the
Belt once more--though he didn't know for how long this would be true.
Order of one kind had been fairly restored. But out of the disaster, and
something very similar on Ceres, the thing that had always been most
feared had sprung. It was the fact of opposed organized might in close
proximity in the region between Pallas and Ceres. Again there was
blaming and counter-blaming, about incidents the exact sources of which
never became clear. What each of the space forces, patrolling opposite
each other, had in the way of weapons, was of course no public matter,
either; but how do you rate two inconceivables? Nor did the threat stay
out in the vastness between the planets.

From Earth came the news of a gigantic, incandescent bubble, rising from
the floor of the Pacific Ocean, and spreading in almost
radioactivity-free waves and ripples, disrupting penned-in areas of
food-producing sea, and lapping at last at far shores. Both sides
disclaimed responsibility for the blast.

Everybody insisted hopefully that this latest danger would die down,
too. Statesmen would talk, official tempers would be calmed, some new
working arrangements would be made. But meanwhile, the old Sword of
Damocles hung by a thinner hair than ever before. One trigger-happy
individual might snap it for good. If not now, the next time, or the
next. A matter of hours, days, or years. The mathematics of
probabilities denied that luck could last forever. In this thought there
was a sense of helplessness, and the ghost of a second Asteroid Belt.

Frank Nelsen might have continued to make himself useful in Pallastown,
or he might have rejoined the Kuzaks, who had moved their mobile posts
back into a safer zone on the other side of Pallas. But his instincts,
now, all pointed along another course of action--the only course that
seemed to make any sense just then.

He approached Art Kuzak at Post One. "About deployment," he began. "I've
made up some sketches, showing what I'd like the factories to turn out.
The ideas aren't new--now they'll spring up all around like thoughts of
food in a famine. If anything will approach answering all problems, they
will. And KRNH is as well able to put them into effect as anybody...
So--unless you've got some better suggestions?"

Art Kuzak looked the sketches over shrewdly for half an hour.

"All right, Frank," he said after some further conversation. "It looks
good enough. I'll chip in. Whether they're sucker bait or not, these
things will sell. Only--could it be you're running away?"

"Perhaps," Nelsen answered. "Or following my nose--by a kind of natural
compulsion which others will display, too. Two hundred of these to
start. The men going with me will pay for theirs. I'll cover the rest of
this batch: You'll be better than I am at figuring out prices and terms
for later batches. Just on a hunch, I'll always want a considerable
oversupply. Post One's shops can turn them out fast. All they are,
mostly, is just stellene, arranged in a somewhat new way. The
fittings--whatever can't be supplied now, can follow."

Fifty asteroid-hoppers, ten of them accompanied by wives, went with
Nelsen as he started out with a loaded caravan toward an empty region
halfway between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Everyone in the group was
convinced by yearnings of his own.

Thinking of Nance Codiss, Nelsen planned to keep within beam range of
the Red Planet. He had called Nance quite often. She was still working
in the Survey Station hospital, which was swamped with injured from
Pallastown.

Nelsen could tag all of the fierce drives in him with single words.

Home was the first. After all his years away from Earth, the meaning of
the word would have been emphatic in him, even without the recurrent
spasms of hot-cold weakness, which, though fading, still legally denied
him the relief of going back to old familiar things. Besides, Earth
seemed insecure. So he could only try to make home possible in space.
Remembering his first trip, long ago, from the Moon to Mars, he knew how
gentle the Big Vacuum could sometimes seem, with just a skin of stellene
between it and himself. Home was a plain longing, too, in the hard,
level eyes around him.

Love. Well, wasn't that part of the first item he had tagged?

Wanderlust. The adventurous distance drive--part of any wild-blooded
vagabond male. Here in his idea, this other side of a human paradox
seemed possible to answer, too. You could go anywhere. Home went with
you. Your friends could go along, if they wished.

Freedom. In the billions of cubic miles could any system ever be big
enough to pen you in, tell you what to think or do, as long as you hurt
no one? Well--he thought not, but perhaps that remained to be seen.

Safety. Deployment was supposed to be the significant factor, there. And
how could you make it any better than it was going to be now? Even if
there were new dangers?

The future. There was no staying with the past. The Earth was becoming
too small for its expanding population. It was a stifling, dangerous
little world that, if the pressures were not relieved, might puff into
fire and fragments at any moment during any year. And the era of
prospecting and exploration in the Asteroid Belt seemed destined soon to
come to an end, in any event.

Frank Nelsen's drives were very strong, after so much had passed around
him for so long a time. Thus, maybe he became too idealistic and--at
moments--almost fanatically believing, without enough of the saving
grain of doubt and humor. The hoppers with him were much like
himself--singly directed by what they had lacked for years.

The assembly operation was quickly accomplished, as soon as they were
what they considered a safe distance from the Belt. On a greater scale,
it was almost nothing more than the first task that Nelsen had ever
performed in space--the jockying of a bubb from its blastoff drum,
inflating it, rigging it, spinning it for centrifugal gravity, and
fitting in its internal appointments.

Nelsen looked at the fifty-odd stellene rings that they had broken out
of their containers--the others, still packed, were held in reserve.
Those that had been freed glistened translucently in the sunlight.
Nelsen had always thought that bubbs were beautiful. And these were
still bubbs, but they were bigger, safer, more complicated.

A bantam-sized hopper named Hank Janns spoke from beside Nelsen as they
floated near each other. "Pop--sizzle--and it's yours, Chief. A prefab,
a house, a dwelling. A kitchen, a terrace, a place for a garden, a place
for kids, even... With a few personal touches, you've got it made.
Better than the house trailer my dad used to hook onto the jalopy when I
was ten... My Alice likes it, too, Chief--that's the _real_ signal! Tell
your pals Kuzak that this is the Idea of the Century."

Frank Nelsen kind of thought so, too, just then. The first thing he did
was to beam the Survey Station on Mars, like he was doing twice a
week--to communicate more often would have courted the still dangerous
chance of being pinpointed. For similar reasons he couldn't explain too
clearly what his project was, but he hoped that he had gotten a picture
of what it was like across to his girl.

"Come see for yourself, Nance," he said enthusiastically. "I'll arrange
for a caravan from Post One to stop by on Phobos and pick you up.
Also--there's my old question... So, what'll it be, Nance? Maybe we can
feel a little surer of ourselves, now. We can work the rest out. Come
and look, hang around--see how everything shakes down, if you'd rather."

He waited for the light-minutes to pass, before he could hear her voice.
"Hello, Frank..." There was the same eager quaver. "Still pretty jammed,
Frank... But we know about it here--from Art... Some of the Pallastown
convalescents will be migrating your way... I'll wrangle free and come
along... Maybe in about a month..."

He didn't know quite whether to take her at her word--or whether she was
somehow hedging. In the Big Vacuum, the human mind seemed hard put,
quite, to know itself. Distances and separations were too great.
Emotions were too intense or too stunned. This much he had learned to
understand. Perhaps he had lost Nance. But maybe, still--in some bleak,
fatalistic way--it would be just as well in the end, for them both.

"Sure, Nance," he said gently. "I'll call again--the regular time..."

Right after that he was talking, over a much greater span, to Art Kuzak.
"First phase about completed, Art... Finger to thumb--in spite of the
troubles elsewhere. So let it roll...!"

Art Kuzak's reply had an undercurrent of jubilance, as if whatever he
knew now was better than he had expected. "Second phase is en route. Joe
will be along... Don't be surprised..."

Joe Kuzak's approach, a few hundred hours later, made a luminous cluster
in the sky, like a miniature galaxy. It resolved itself into vast bales,
and all of the stellene rings--storage and factory--of Post Three. Also
there were over a hundred men and thirty-three wives. Many of them were
Pallastown refugees.

Nelsen helped Joe through the airlock of the ring that he had hoped
would be his and Nance's. "Bubbtown, huh, Frank?" Joe chuckled. "The
idea is spreading faster than we had believed, and we aren't the only
ones that have got it. The timing is just right. People are scared, fed
up. Out Here--and on Earth, too... Most of the guys that are single in
this crowd have girls who will be on the way soon. Some of the tougher
space-fitness tests are being junked. We're even screening a small batch
of runaways from Ceres--to be included in the next load. An experiment.
But it should work out. They're just like anybody... Art is all of
sudden sort of liberal--the way he gets when things seem to break
right."

Everything went fine for quite a while. Art Kuzak was out playing his
hunches, giving easy terms to those who couldn't pay at once.

"Might as well gamble," he growled from the distance. "Space and
terrestrial forces are still poised. If we lose at all, we lose the
whole works, anyway. So let's bring them from all around the Belt, from
Earth, Venus and from wherever they'll come. Give them a place to work,
or let them start their own deal. It all helps... You know what I hear?
The Tovies are letting men do things by themselves. To hold their own in
room as big as this, they have to. Their bosses are over a barrel. Just
organized discipline ain't gonna work. A guy has to want things his own
way..."

In a more general view, doubts were sneaking up on Frank Nelsen, though
as far as KRNH was concerned, he had started the ball rolling. "We'll
keep our fingers crossed," he said.

It was only a couple of Earth-days later that another member of the old
Bunch showed up. "I had to bubb all the way from Mercury to Post One to
get your location from Art, Frankie," he complained. "Cripes--why didn't
anybody ever try to beam Gimp and me, anymore? Solar radiation ain't
_that_ hard to get past... So I had to come sneak a look for myself, to
see what the Big Deal on the grapevine is."

"We left the back door unlatched for you, Two-and-Two," Nelsen laughed.
"And you crept in quietly. Swell to see you."

Sitting showered and in fresh clothes on Frank Nelsen's sundeck, any
changes in Two-and-Two Baines were less evident than one might have
supposed. His eyes had a much surer, farther look. Otherwise he was
still the same large hulk with much the same lugubrious humor.

"Mercury's okay, Frankie," he said. "About four thousand people are
living in the Twilight Zone, already. I could show you pictures, but I
guess you know. Whole farms and little towns under stellene. Made me
some dough doing lots of the building. Could have been more, but who
cares? Oh, Gimp'll be along out here sometime, soon. He was putting up
another solar powerhouse. But he's beginning to say, what the hell, the
future ain't there, or on any planet... So this is how it's gonna be,
huh? With some additions, sure. Factories, super markets, cornfields,
pig farms, parks, playgrounds, beauty parlors, all encased in stellene,
and orbiting in clusters around the sun, eh...? 'Hey, Pop!' some small
fry will say to his old man. 'Gimme ten bucks, please, for an ice cream
cone down at the soda bubb?' And his mom'll say to his dad, 'George,
Dear--is the ionocar nice and shiny? I have to go play bridge with the
girls over in Nelsenville...' No, I'm not ribbing you, Frankie. It'll be
kind of nice to hear that type of talk, again--if they only include a
place for a man to be a little bit himself."

Two-and-Two (George) Baines sighed rapturously and continued. "Figure it
out to the end, Frankie. No planets left--all the materials in them used
up to build these bubbtowns. There'll be just big shining, magnificent
rings made up of countless little floating stellene houses all around
the sun. A zillion people, maybe more. Gardens, flowers, everything
beautiful. Everybody free to move anywhere. Uh-uh--I'm not making fun,
Frankie. I'm joining in with all the relief and happiness of my heart.
Only, it'll be kind of sad to see the old planets go--to be replaced by
a wonderful super-suburbia. Or maybe we should say, superbia."

Nelsen burst out laughing, at last. "You sly slob...! Anyhow, _that_
extreme is millenniums off--if it has a chance of happening, at all.
Even so, our descendants, if any, will be going to the stars by then.
There won't be any frustration of their thirst for danger... Just as
there isn't any, now, for us. Except that we can keep our weapons handy,
and hope... Me--I'm a bit bored with adventure, just at present."

"So am I," Two-and-Two affirmed fervently. "Now, have you got me a job,
Frankie?"

"There'll be something," Nelsen answered him. "Meanwhile, to keep from
feeling regimented by civilization, you could take your rocket launcher
and join the perimeter watchers that range out a thousand miles..."

Nance Codiss arrived a week later, with a group of recent Pallastown
convalescents. Bad signs came with her, but that fact got lost as she
hugged Nelsen quickly there in the dwelling he had set up with the
thought it would be their home. At once she went on a feminine exploring
expedition of the prefab's interior, and its new, gleaming appointments.
Kitchen, living room, sundeck. Nelsen's garden was already well along.

"Like the place?" he asked.

"Love it, Frank," she answered quietly.

"It could have been more individual," he commented. "But we were in a
hurry. So they are all identical. That can be fixed, some, soon. You're
thinking about improvements?"

Her eyes twinkled past the shadow in her expression. "Always some," she
laughed. Then her face went solemn. "Let them ride, for now, Frank. It's
all wonderful and unbelievable. Hug me again--I love you. Only--all this
is even more fantastically new to me than it is to you. Realize that,
please, Frank. I'm a month late in getting here and I'm still groping my
way. A little more time--for us both... Because you might be fumbling,
some, too."

Her tone was gentle. He saw that her eyes, meeting his, were honest and
clear. He felt the careful strength behind them, after a moment of hurt.
There was no rushing, one-way enthusiasm that might easily burn out and
blow up in a short time.

He held her close. "Sure, Nance," he said.

"You probably know that our group from Mars was followed, Frank. I hope
I'm not a jinx."

"Of course you're not. Somebody would have followed--sometime. We're
watching and listening. Just keep your Archer handy..."

The faint, shifting blips in the radar screens was an old story,
reminding him that certain things were no better than before, and that
some were worse. Somewhere there were other bubbtowns. There were
policing space forces, too. But for millions of miles around, this
cluster of eight hundred prefabs and the numerous larger bubbs that
served them, were all alone.

Nelsen looked out from his sundeck, and saw dangerous contrasts. The
worst, perhaps, was a spherical bubble of stellene. Inside it was a
great globe of water surrounded by air--a colossal dewdrop. Within it, a
man and two small boys--no doubt father and sons from Pallastown, were
swimming, horsing around, having a swell time--only a few feet from
nothing. Nelsen spoke softly into his radio-phone. "Leland--close down
the pool..."

It wasn't long before the perimeter watch, returning from a patrol that
had taken them some distance out, brought in a makeshift dwelling bubb
made from odds and ends of stellene. They had also picked up its
occupant, a lean comic character with an accent and a strange way of
talking.

"Funny that you'd turn up, here--Igor, is it?" Nelsen said dryly.

Igor sniffed, as if with sorrow. He had been roughed up, some. "Very
funny--also simple. You making a house, so I am making a house for this
identical purpose. People from Ceres are already being here; in
consequence, I am also arriving. Nobody are saying what are proper doing
and thinking--so I am informed. I am believing--okay, Igor. When being
not true, I am going away again."

The tone was bland. The pale eyes looked naive and artless, except,
perhaps, for a hard, shrewd glint, deep down.

Joe Kuzak was present. "We searched him, Frank," he said. "His bubb,
too. He's clean--as far as we can tell. Not even a weapon. I also asked
him some questions. I savvy a little of his real lingo."

"I'll ask them over," Nelsen answered. "Igor--a friend named Tiflin
wouldn't be being around some place, would he?"

The large space comedian didn't even hesitate. "I am thinking not very
far--not knowing precisely. Somebody more is being here, likewise. Belt
Parnay. You are knowing this one? Plenty Jollies--new fellas--not having
much supplies--only many new rocket launchers they are receiving from
someplace. You are understanding this? Bad luck, here, it is meaning."

Nelsen eyed the man warily, with mixed doubt and liking. "I don't think
you can be going away again, right now, Igor," he said. "We don't have a
jail, but a guard will be as good..."

The watch didn't give the alarm for several hours. Three hisses in the
phones, made vocally. Then one, then two more. North, second quadrant,
that meant. Direction of first attack. Ionic drives functioned. The
cluster of bubbs began to scatter further. Nelsen knew that if Igor had
told the truth, the outlook was very poor. Too much deployment would
thin the defenses too much. And against new, homing rockets--if Parnay
really had them--it would be almost useless. A relatively small number
of men, riding free in armor, could smash the much larger targets from
almost any distance.

Nelsen didn't stay in his prefab. Floating in his Archer, he could be
his own, less easily identifiable, less easily hit command post, while
he fired his own homing missiles at the far-off radar specks of the
attackers. He ordered everyone not specifically needed inside the bubbs
for some defense purpose to jump clear.

In the first half-minute, he saw at least fifty compartmented prefabs
partly crumple, as explosives tore into them. A dozen, torn open, were
deflated entirely. The swimming pool globe was punctured, and a cloud of
frosty vapor made rainbows in the sunshine, as the water boiled away.
Far out, Nelsen saw the rockets he and his own men had launched,
sparkling soundlessly, no doubt scoring, some, too.

The attackers didn't even try to get close yet. Far greater damage would
have to be inflicted, before panic and disorganization might give them
sufficient advantage. But such damage would take only minutes. Too much
would reduce the loot. So now there was a halt in the firing, and
another component of fear was applied. It was a growling, taunting
voice.

"Nelsen! And all of you silly bladder-brains...! This is Belt Parnay...!
Ever hear of him? Come back from hell, eh? Not with just rocks, this
time! The latest, surest equipment! Want to give up, now, Nelsen--you
and your nice, civilized people? Cripes, what will you cranks try next?
Villages built in nothing and on nothing! Thanks, though. Brother, what
a blowout this is gonna provide!"

Parnay's tone had shifted, becoming mincingly mocking, then hard and
joyful at the end.

Maybe he shouldn't have suggested so plainly what would happen--unless
something was done, soon. Maybe he shouldn't have sounded just a little
bit unsure of himself under all his bluff. Because Nelsen had made
preparations that matched a general human trend. Now, he saw a condition
that fitted in, making an opportunity... So he began to taunt Parnay
back.

"We've got a lot of the latest type rockets to throw, too, Parnay. You'd
have quite a time, trying to take us. But there's more... Just look
behind you, Parnay. And all around. Not too far. Who's silly? Who's the
jerk? Some new guys are in your crowd, I hear? Then they won't have much
against them--they aren't real outlaws. Do you think they want to keep
following you around, stinking in their armor--when what we've got is
what they're bound to want, right now, too? They can hear what I'm
saying, Parnay. Every one of them must have a weapon in his hands. Why,
you stupid clown, you're in a trap! We will give them what they need
most, without them having to risk getting killed. In space, there'll
have to be a lot of things forgotten, but not for you or for the rough
old-timers with you... Come on, you guys out there. There's a folded
bubb right here waiting for each of you. Take it anywhere you want--away
from here, of course... Parnay--big, important Belt Parnay--are you
still alive...?"

Nelsen had his own sneering tone of mockery. He used it to best
advantage--but with fear in his heart. Plenty of his act was only
counter-bluff. But now, as he paused, he heard Two-and-Two Baines'
mournful voice continue the barrage of persuasion.

"Flowers, Parnay? We ain't got many, yet. But you won't care...
Fellas--do you want to keep being pushed around by this loud mouth who
likes to run and lets you sweat for him, because he's mostly alone and
needs company? Believe me, I know what it's like out there, too. At a
certain point, all you really want is something a little like home. And
the Chief ain't kidding. It was all planned. Try us and see. Send a
couple of guys in. They'll come out with the proof..."

Other voices were shouting. "Wake up, you suckers...! You'll never take
us, you stupid slobs...! Come on and try it, if that's what you want to
be..."

What happened, could never have happened so quickly if Parnay's
doubtless considerably disgruntled following hadn't been disturbed
further by intrigue beforehand. Nelsen heard Parnay roar commands and
curses that might have awed many a man. But then there was a cluster of
minute sparks in the distance, as rockets, not launched by the
defenders, homed and exploded.

There was a pause. Then many voices were audible, shouting at the same
time, with scarcely any words clear... Several minutes passed like that.
Then there was almost silence.

"So--has it happened?" Nelsen growled into his phone.

"It has," came the mocking answer. "Be cavalier, Nelsen. Salute the new
top outlaw... Don't faint-- I knew I'd make it... And don't try anything
you might regret... I'm coming in with a couple of my Jolly Lads. You'd
better not welsh on your promises. Because the others are armed and
waiting..."

The guys with Tiflin looked more tired than tough. Out from under their
fierce, truculent bravado showed the fiercer hunger for common things
and comforts. Nelsen knew. The record was in his own memory.

"You'll get your bubbs right away," he told them. "Then send the others
in, a pair at a time. After that, go and get lost. Make your own
place--town--whatever you want to call it... Leland, Crobert,
Sharpe--fit these guys out, will you...?"

All this happened under the sardonic gaze of Glen Tiflin, and before the
puzzled eyes of Joe Kuzak and Two-and-Two Baines. A dozen others were
hovering near.

Nelsen lowered his voice and called, "Nance?"

She answered at once. "I'm all right, Frank. A few people to patch. Some
beyond that. I'm in the hospital with Doc Forbes..."

"You guys can find something useful to do," Nelsen snapped at the
gathering crowd.

"Well, Frankie," Tiflin taunted. "Aren't you going to invite me into
your fancy new quarters? Joe and Two-and-Two also look as though they
could stand a drink."

On the sundeck, Tiflin spoke again. "I suppose you've got it figured,
Nelsen?"

Nelsen answered him in clipped fashion. "Thanks. But let's not dawdle
too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've
still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the
other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking--like part of
it, _or like a good cop_. The first might still be right."

Tiflin sneered genially. "Some cops can't carry badges. And they don't
always stop trouble, but they try... Anyhow, what side do you think I
was on, after Fessler kicked me around for months...? Let Igor go. He's
got law and order in his soul. I kind of like having him around... But
keep your mouths buttoned, will you? I'm talking to you, Mr. Baines, and
you, Mr. Kuzak, as well as to you, Nelsen. And I'm take my bubb along,
the same as the other ninety or so guys who are left from Parnay's
crowd. I've got to look good with them... Cheers, you slobs. See you
around..."

Afterwards, Joe growled, "Hell--what do you know! Him...! Special
Police. Undercover. U.N., U.S., or what?"

"Shut up," Nelsen growled.

Though he had sensed it coming and had met it calmly, the Tiflin switch
was something that Frank Nelsen had trouble getting over. It confused
him. It made him want to laugh.

Another thing that began to bother him even more was the realization
that the violence, represented by Fessler, Fanshaw, Parnay, and
thousands of others like them back through history, was bound to crop up
again. It was part of the complicated paradox of human nature. And it
was hard to visualize a time when there wouldn't be followers--frustrated
slobs who wanted to get out and kick over the universe. Nelsen had felt
such urges cropping up within himself. So this wasn't the end of
trouble--especially not out here in raw space, that was still far too
big for man-made order.

So it wasn't just the two, opposed space navies patrolling, more quietly
now, between Ceres and Pallas. That condition could pass. The way people
always chose--or were born to--different sides was another matter. Or
was it just the natural competition of life in whatever form? More
disturbing, perhaps, was the mere fact of trying to live here, so close
to natural forces that could kill in an instant.

For example, Nelsen often saw two children and a dog racing around
inside one of the rotating bubbs--having fun as if just in a back yard.
If the stellene were ripped, the happy picture would change to horror...
How long would it take to get adjusted to--and accept--such a chance?
Thoughts like that began to disturb Nelsen. Out here, in all this
enormous freedom, the shift from peaceful routine to tragedy could be
quicker than ever before.

But is wasn't thinking about such grim matters that actually threw Frank
Nelsen--that got him truly mixed up. In Parnay's attack, ten men and two
women had been killed. There were also twenty-seven injured. Such facts
he could accept--they didn't disturb him too much, either. Yet there was
a curious sort of straw that broke the camel's back, one might have
said.

The incident took place quite a while after the assault. Out on an
inspection tour in his Archer, he happened to glance through the
transparent wall of the sundeck of a prefab he was passing...

In a moment he was inside, grinning happily. Miss Rosalie Parks was
lecturing him: "... You needn't be surprised that I am here, Franklin.
'O, tempora O, mores!' Cicero once said. 'O, the times! O, the customs!'
But we needn't be so pessimistic. I am in perfect health--and ten years
below retirement age. Young people, I suspect, will still be taught
Latin if they choose... Or there will be something else... Of course I
had heard of your project... It was quite easy for you not to notice my
arrival. But I came with the latest group, straight from Earth..."

Nelsen was very pleased that Miss Parks was here. He told her so. He
stayed for cakes and coffee. He told her that it was quite right for her
to keep up with the times. He believed this, himself...

Afterwards, though, in his own quarters, he began to laugh. Her presence
was so incongruous, so fantastic...

His laughter became wild. Then it changed to great rasping hiccups. Too
much that was unbelievable by old standards had happened around him.
This was delayed reaction to space. He had heard of such a thing. But he
had hardly thought that it could apply to him, anymore...! Well, he
knew what to do... Tranquilizer tablets were practically forgotten
things to him. But he gulped one now. In a few minutes, he seemed okay,
again...

Yet he couldn't help thinking back to the Bunch, the Planet Strappers.
To the wild fulfillment they had sought... So--most of them had made it.
They had become men--the hard way. Except, of course, Eileen--the
distaff side... They had planned, callowly, to meet and compare
adventures in ten years. And this was still less than seven...

How long had it been since he had even beamed old Paul, in Jarviston...?
Now that most of the Syrtis Fever had left him, it seemed futile even to
consider such a thing. It involved memories buried in enormous time,
distance, change, and unexpectedness.

Glen Tiflin--the sour, space-wild punk who had become a cop. Had Tiflin
even saved his--Frank Nelsen's--life, once, long ago, persuading a Jolly
Lad leader to cast him adrift for a joke, rather than to kill him and
Ramos outright...?

Charlie Reynolds--the Bunch-member whom everybody had thought most
likely to succeed. Well, Charlie was dead from a simple thing, and
buried on Venus. He was unknown--except to his acquaintances.

Jig Hollins, the guy who had played it safe, was just as dead.

Eileen Sands was a celebrity in Serene, in Pallastown and the whole
Belt.

Mex Ramos--of the flapping squirrel tails on an old motor scooter--now
belonged to the history of exploration, though he no longer had real
hands or feet, and, very likely, was now dead, somewhere out toward
interstellar space.

David Lester, the timid one, had become successful in his own way, and
was the father of one of the first children to be born in the Belt.

Two-and-Two Baines had won enough self-confidence to make cracks about
the future. Gimp Hines, once the saddest case in the Whole Bunch, had
been, for a long time, perhaps the best adjusted to the Big Vacuum.

Art Kuzak, one-time hunkie football player, was a power among the
asteroids. His brother, Joe, had scarcely changed, personally.

About himself, Nelsen got the most lost. What had he become, after his
wrong guesses and his great luck, and the fact that he had managed to
see more than most? Generally, he figured that he was still the same
free-wheeling vagabond by intention, but too serious to quite make it
work out. Sometimes he actually gave people orders. It came to him as a
surprise that he must be almost as rich as old J. John Reynolds, who
was still drawing wealth from a comparatively small loan--futilely at
his age, unless he had really aimed at the ideal of bettering the
future.

Nelsen's busy mind couldn't stop. He thought of three other-world
cultures he had glimpsed. Two had destroyed each other. The third and
strangest was still to be reckoned with...

There, he came to Mitch Storey, the colored guy with the romantic name.
Of all the Planet Strappers, his history was the most fabulous. Maybe,
now, with a way of living in open space started, and with the planets
ultimately to serve only as sources of materials, Mitch's star people
would be left in relative peace for centuries.

Frank Nelsen began to chuckle again. As if something, everything, was
funny. Which, perhaps, it was in a way. Because the whole view, personal
and otherwise, seemed too huge and unpredictable for his wits to grasp.
It was as if neither he, nor any other person, belonged where he was at
all. He checked his thoughts in time. Otherwise, he would have commenced
hiccuping.

That was the way it went for a considerable succession of arbitrary
twenty-four hour day-periods. As long as he kept his attention on the
tasks in hand, he was okay--he felt fine. Still, the project was
proceeding almost automatically, just now. The first cluster of prefabs
had grown until it had been split into halves, which moved a million
miles apart, circling the sun. And he knew that there were other
clusters, built by other outfits, growing and dividing into widely
separated portions of the same great ring-like zone.

Maybe the old problems were beat. Safety? If deployment was the answer
to that, it was certainly there--to a degree, at least. Room enough?
Check. It was certainly available. Freedom of mind and action? There
wasn't much question that that would work out, too. Home, comfort, and a
kind of life not too unfamiliar? In the light of detached logic and
observation, that was going fine, too. In the main, people were
adjusting very quickly and eagerly. Perhaps _too_ quickly.

That was where Nelsen always got scared, as if he had become a nervous
old man. The Big Vacuum had a grandeur. It could seem gentle. Could
children, women and men--everybody sometimes forgot--learn to live with
it without losing their respect for it, until suddenly it killed them?

That was the worst point, if he let himself think. And how could he
always avoid that? From there his thoughts would branch out into his
multiple uncertainties, confusions and puzzlements. Then those
strangling hiccups would come. And who could be taking devil-killers
all the time?

He hadn't avoided Nance Codiss. He talked with her every day, lunched
with her, even held her hand. Otherwise, a restraint had come over him.
Because something was all wrong with him, and was getting worse. Just
one urge was clear, now, inside him. She knew, of course, that he was
loused up; but she didn't say anything. Finally he told her.

"You were right, Nance. I was fumbling my way, too. Space fatigue, the
medic told me just a little while ago. He agrees with me that I should
go back to Earth. I've got to go--to take a look at everything from the
small end, again. Of course I've always had the longing. And now I can
go. It has been a year since the worst of the Syrtis Fever."

"I've had the fever. And sometimes the longing, Frank," she said after
she had studied him for a moment. "I think I'd like to go."

"Only if you want to, Nance. It's me that's flunking out, pal." He
chuckled apologetically, almost lightly. "My part has to be a one-person
deal. I don't know whether I'll ever come back. And you seem to fit, out
here."

She looked at him coolly for almost a minute. "All right, Frank," she
said quietly. "Follow your nose. It's just liable to be right on the
beam--for you. I might follow mine. I don't know."

"Joe and Two-and-Two are around--if you need anything, Nance," he said.
"I'll tell them. Gimp, I hear, is on the way. Not much point in my
waiting for him, though..."

Somehow he loved Nance Codiss as much or more than ever. But how could
he tell her that and make sense? Not much made sense to him anymore. It
seemed that he had to get away from everybody that he had ever seen in
space.

Fifty hours before his departure with a returning bubb caravan that had
brought more Earth-emigrants, Nelsen acquired a travelling companion who
had arrived from Pallastown with a small caravan bringing machinery. The
passenger-hostess brought him to Nelsen's prefab. He was a grave little
guy, five years old. He was solemn, polite, frightened, tall for his
age--funny how corn and kids grew at almost zero-gravity.

The boy handed Nelsen a letter. "From my father and mother, sir," he
said.

Nelsen read the typed missive.

"Dear Frank: The rumor has come that you are going home. You have our
very best wishes, as always. Our son, Davy, is being sent to his
paternal grandmother, now living in Minneapolis. He will go to school
there. He is capable of making the trip without any special attention.
But--a small imposition. If you can manage it, please look in on him
once in a while, on the way. We would appreciate this favor. Thank you,
take care of yourself, and we shall hope to see you somewhere within the
next few months. Your sincere friends, David and Helen Lester."

A lot of nerve, Nelsen thought first. But he tried to grin engagingly at
the kid and almost succeeded.

"We're in luck, Dave," he said. "I'm going to Minneapolis, too. I'm
afraid of a lot of things. What are you afraid of?"

The small fry's jutting lip trembled. "Earth," he said. "A great big
planet. Hoppers tell me I won't even be able to stand up or breathe."

Nelsen very nearly laughed and went into hiccups, again. Fantastic.
Another viewpoint. Seeing through the other end of the telescope. But
how else would it be for a youngster born in the Belt, while being
sent--in the old colonial pattern--to the place that his parents
regarded as home?

"Those jokers," Nelsen scoffed. "They're pulling your leg! It just isn't
so, Davy. Anyhow, during the trip, the big bubb will be spun fast
enough, so that we will get used to the greater Earth-gravity. Let me
tell you something. I guess it's space and the Belt that _I'm_ afraid
of. I never quite got over it. Silly, huh?"

But as Nelsen watched the kid brighten, he remembered that he, himself,
had been scared of Earth, too. Scared to return, to show weakness, to
lack pride... Well, to hell with that. He had accomplished enough, now,
maybe, to cancel such objections. Now it seemed that he had to get to
Earth before it vanished because of something he had helped start.
Silly, of course...

He and Davy travelled fast and almost in luxury. Within two weeks they
were in orbit around the bulk of the Old World. Then, in the powerful
tender with its nuclear retard rockets, there was the Blast In--the
reverse of that costly agony that had once meant hard won and enormous
freedom, when he was poor in money and rich in mighty yearning. But now
Nelsen yielded in all to the mother clutch of the gravity. The whole
process had been gentled and improved. There were special anti-knock
seats. There was sound- and vibration-insulation. Even Davy's slight
fear was more than half thrill.

At the new Minneapolis port, Nelsen delivered David Lester, Junior into
the care of his grandmother, who seemed much more human than Nelsen once
had thought long ago. Then he excused himself quickly.

Seeking the shelter of anonymity, he bought a rucksack for his few
clothes, and boarded a bus which dropped him at Jarviston, Minnesota, at
two a.m. He thrust his hands into his pockets, partly like a lonesome
tramp, partly like some carefree immortal, and partly like a mixed-up
wraith who didn't quite know who or what he was, or where he belonged.

In his wallet he had about five hundred dollars. How much more he might
have commanded, he couldn't even guess. Wups, fella, he told himself.
That's too weird, too indigestible--don't start hiccuping again. How old
are you--twenty-five, or twenty-five thousand years? Wups--careful...

The full Moon was past zenith, looking much as it always had. The
blue-tinted air domes of colossal industrial development, were mostly
too small at this distance to be seen without a glass. Good...

With wondering absorption he sniffed the mingling of ripe field and road
smells, borne on the warm breeze of the late-August night. Some few cars
evidently still ran on gasoline. For a moment he watched neon signs
blink. In the desertion he walked past Lehman's Drug Store and Otto
Kramer's bar, and crossed over to pause for a nameless moment in front
of Paul Hendricks' Hobby Center, which was all dark, and seemed little
changed. He took to a side street, and won back the rustle of trees and
the click of his heels in the silence.

A few more buildings--that was about all that was visibly different in
Jarviston, Minnesota.

A young cop eyed him as he returned to the main drag and paused near a
street lamp. He had a flash of panic, thinking that the cop was
somebody, grown up, now, who would recognize him. But at least it was no
one that he remembered.

The cop grinned. "Get settled in a hotel, buddy," he said. "Or else move
on, out of town."

Nelsen grinned back, and ambled out to the highway, where intermittent
clumps of traffic whispered.

There he paused, and looked up at the sky, again. The electric beacon of
a weather observation satellite blinked on and off, moving slowly. Venus
had long since set, with hard-to-see Mercury preceding it. Jupiter
glowed in the south. Mars looked as remote and changeless as it must
have looked in the Stone Age. The asteroids were never even visible here
without a telescope.

The people that he knew, and the events that he had experienced Out
There, were like myths, now. _How could he ever put Here and There
together, and unite the mismatched halves of himself and his
experience?_ He had been born on Earth, the single home of his kind from
the beginning. How could he ever even have been Out There?

He didn't try to hitch a ride. He walked fourteen miles to the next
town, bought a small tent, provisions and a special, miniaturized
radio. Then he slipped into the woods, along Hickman's Lake, where he
used to go.

There he camped, through September, and deep into October. He fished, he
swam again. He dropped stones into the water, and watched the circles
form, with a kind of puzzled groping in his memory. He retreated from
the staggering magnificence of his recent past and clutched at old
simplicities.

On those rare occasions when he shaved, he saw the confused sickness in
his face, reflected by his mirror. Sometimes, for a moment, he felt hot,
and then cold, as if his blood still held a tiny trace of Syrtis Fever.
If there _was_ such a thing? No--don't start to laugh, he warned
himself. Relax. Let the phantoms fade away. Somewhere, that multiple
bigness of Nothing, of life and death, of success and unfairness and
surprise, must have reality--but not here...

Occasionally he listened to news on the radio. But mostly he shut it
off--out. Until boredom at last began to overtake him--because he had
been used to so much more than what was here. Until--specifically--one
morning, when the news came too quickly, and with too much impact. It
was a recording, scratchy, and full of unthinkable distance.

"... Frank, Gimp, Two-and-Two, Paul, Mr. Reynolds, Otto, Les, Joe, Art,
everybody--especially you, Eileen--remember what you promised, when I
get back, Eileen...! Here I am, on Pluto--edge of the star desert! Clear
sailing--all the way. All I see, yet, is twilight, rocks, mountains,
snow which must be frozen atmosphere--and one big star, Sol. But I'll
get the data, and be back..."

Nelsen listened to the end, with panic in his face--as if such
adventures and such living were too gigantic and too rich... He hiccuped
once. Then he held himself very still and concentrated. He had known
that voice Out There and Here, too. Now, as he heard it again--Here, but
from Out There--it became like a joining force to bring them both
together within himself. Though how could it be...?

"Ramos," he said aloud. "Made it... Another good guy, accomplishing what
he wanted... Hey...! Hey, that's swell... Like things should happen."

He didn't hiccup anymore, or laugh. By being very careful, he just
grinned, instead. He arose to his feet, slowly.

"What am I doing here--wasting time?" he seemed to ask the woods.

Without picking up his camping gear at all, he headed for the road,
thumbed a ride to Jarviston, where he arrived before eight o'clock.
Somebody had started ringing the city hall bell. Celebration?

Hendricks' was the most logical place for Nelsen to go, but he passed
it by, following a hunch to his old street. _She_ had almost said that
she might come home, too. He touched the buzzer.

Not looking too completely dishevelled himself, he stood there, as a
girl--briskly early in dress and impulse, so as not to waste the bright
morning--opened the door.

"Yeah, Nance--me," he croaked apologetically. "Ramos has reached Pluto!"

"I know, _Frankie_!" she burst out.

But his words rushed on. "I've been goofing off--by Hickman's Lake. Over
now. Emotional indigestion, I guess--from living too big, before I could
take it. I figured you _might_ be here. If you weren't, I'd come...
Because I know where I belong. Nance--I hope you're not angry. Maybe
we're pulling together, at last?"

"Angry--when I was the first fumbler? How could that be, Frank? Oh, I
knew where you were--folks found out. I told them to leave you alone,
because I understood some of what you were digging through. Because it
was a little the same--for me... So, you see, I didn't just tag after
you." She laughed a little. "That wouldn't be proud, would it? Even
though Joe and Two-and-Two said I had to go bring you back..."

His arms went tight around her, right there on the old porch.
"Nance--love you," he whispered. "And we've got to be tough. Everybody's
got to be tough--to match what we've come to. Even little kids. But it
was always like that--on any kind of frontier, wasn't it? A few will get
killed, but more will live--many more..."

Like that, Frank Nelsen shook the last of the cobwebs out of his
brain--and got back to his greater destiny.

"I'll buy all of that philosophy," Nance chuckled gently. "But you still
look as though you needed some breakfast, Frank."

He grinned. "Later. Let's go to see Paul, first. A big day for
him--because of Ramos. Paul is getting feeble, I suppose?" Nelsen's face
had sobered.

"Not so you could notice it much, Frank," Nance answered. "There's a new
therapy--another side of What's Coming, I guess..."

They walked the few blocks. The owner of the Hobby Center was now a
long-time member of KRNH Enterprises. He had the means to expand and
modernize the place beyond recognition. But clearly he had realized that
some things should not change.

In the display window, however, there gleamed a brand-new Archer Nine,
beautiful as a garden or a town floating, unsupported, under the
stars--beautiful as the Future, which was born of the Past.

A Bunch of fellas--the current crop of aficionados--were inside the
store, making lots of noise over the news. Was that Chip Potter, grown
tall? Was that his same old dog, Blaster? Frank Nelsen could see Paul
Hendricks' white-fringed bald-spot.

"Go ahead--open the door. Or are you still scared?" Nance challenged
lightly.

"No--just anticipating," Nelsen gruffed. "And seeing if I can remember
what's Out There ... Serene, bubb, Belt, Pallas..." He spoke the words
like comic incantations, yet with a dash of reverence.

"Superbia?" Nance teased.

"That is somebody's impertinent joke!" he growled in feigned solemnity.
"Anyhow, it would be too bad if something _that_ important couldn't take
a little ribbing. Shucks--we've hardly _started_ to work, yet!"

He drew Nance back a pace, out of sight of those in the store, and
kissed her long and rather savagely.

"With all its super-complications, life still seems pretty nice," he
commented.

The door squeaked, just as it used to, as Nelsen pushed it open. The old
overhead bell jangled.

Pale, watery eyes lifted and lighted with another fulfilment.

"Well, Frank! Long time no see...!"




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THE PLANET STRAPPERS

started out as The Bunch, a group of student-astronauts in the back room
of a store in Jarviston, Minnesota. They wanted off Earth, and they
begged, borrowed and built what they needed to make it.

THE PLANET STRAPPERS got what they wanted--a start on the road to the
stars--but no one brought up on Earth could have imagined what was
waiting for them Out There!

In THE PLANET STRAPPERS, Ray Gallun has written a story of the Day After
Tomorrow--a story of what it will be like for the men who cross the
space frontier--a story that some of us will be *living* some day....

A PYRAMID BOOK                                                       35c

COVER: JOHN SCHOENHERR

Printed in U.S.A.




Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors in the original
text have been corrected in this eBook:

Page 18: "signficant" changed to "significant"

Page 43: single quotation mark changed to a double quotation mark

Page 69: "re-leatch" changed to "re-latch"

Page 70: "in" changed to "an"

Page 72: "Casseopia" changed to "Cassiopeia"

Page 73: "sitch" changed to "switch"

Page 75: "dopy" changed to "dopey"

Page 77: "thundrous" changed to "thunderous"

Page 78: missing quotation mark added; "dissappeared" changed to
"disappeared"; "a" changed to "at"; "Were" changed to "We're"

Page 81: "Kuzack" changed to "Kuzak"

Page 85: "stear" changed to "steer"

Page 89: "Kuzaks" changed to "Kuzaks'"

Page 92: "asteriods" changed to "asteroids"

Page 104: missing quotation mark added; "summersaults" changed to
"somersaults"

Page 107: "heathy" changed to "healthy"

Page 113: "asteriod-hoppers" changed to "asteroid-hoppers"

Page 115: "prismastic" changed to "prismatic"

Page 121: "guage" changed to "gauge"

Page 124: "exhude" changed to "exude"

Page 132: extra quotation mark removed

Page 137: "assteroid-hoppers" changed to "asteroid-hoppers";
"advertized" changed to "advertised"

Page 143: "milleniums" changed to "millenniums"

Page 145: "quandrant" changed to "quadrant"

Page 158: "fantasty" changed to "fantasy"





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