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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Planet Strappers
+
+Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2008 [EBook #25067]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLANET STRAPPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Joel Schlosberg, Fred Kiesche and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+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...!"
+
+
+
+
+*FOR SCIENCE FICTION FANS--*
+
+*A space-age collection of startling adventures*
+
+
+*TOMORROW AND TOMORROW*
+
+*Hunt Collins.* Battle of strange cults for control of the world. (G654)
+
+
+*SIX x H*
+
+*Robert Heinlein.* Imaginative tales from sorcery to the fourth
+dimension. (G642)
+
+
+*THE SYNTHETIC MAN*
+
+*Theodore Sturgeon.* A startling science-fiction fantasy of a man who
+suddenly discovers he is not human. (G636)
+
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+
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+
+
+*ORBIT UNLIMITED*
+
+*Poul Anderson.* Earth had no room for them--their only escape was the
+most dangerous voyage of all time. (G615)
+
+
+*AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT*
+
+*Arthur C. Clarke.* A story of an unimaginable future one billion years
+from now. (G554)
+
+
+*VENUS PLUS X*
+
+*Theodore Sturgeon.* He was in a world of strange creatures, unheard-of
+buildings and an unfamiliar language. (G544)
+
+
+*THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER*
+
+*L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt.* Two scientists explore a world
+where magic works. (G530)
+
+
+*THE TOMORROW PEOPLE*
+
+*Judith Merril.* He came back from Mars with a secret too terrible to
+remember. (G502)
+
+
+*MAN OF MANY MINDS*
+
+*E. Everett Evans.* In his brain was the power to rule the world and the
+Universe. (G458)
+
+
+*SPECIAL: 3 BOOKS FOR $1, POSTAGE FREE*
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+*PYRAMID BOOKS, Dept. G658, 444 Madison Ave., New York 22, N. Y.*
+
+Please send me the following books at the special price of 3 books for
+$1, postage free (single copies 35¢ each plus 10¢ mailing charges). I
+enclose $1 ........................
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+G654 G642 G636 G624 G615 G554 G544 G530 G502 G458
+
+Name....................................................................
+
+Address ................................................................
+
+City ........................... State .................................
+
+
+
+
+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"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLANET STRAPPERS ***
+
+***** This file should be named 25067-8.txt or 25067-8.zip *****
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+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Planet Strappers by Raymond Z. Gallun</title>
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Planet Strappers
+
+Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2008 [EBook #25067]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLANET STRAPPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Joel Schlosberg, Fred Kiesche and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p style="text-align: center">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+
+<p>Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright
+on this publication was renewed. The 3-dot ellipsis has been retained
+as in the original.</p></div>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><img src="images/frontcover.jpg" alt="front cover with blurb 'Out There&mdash;the world's first space colony&mdash;adventures and dangers beyond human ken!'" title="front cover with blurb 'Out There&mdash;the world's first space colony&mdash;adventures and dangers beyond human ken!'" width="600" height="1014"></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom: 4em">&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p001">p.&nbsp;1</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><b>A Million Miles Beyond the Moon...</b></p>
+
+<p>... Nelson and Ramos sped on toward Mars in
+their tiny plastic-bubble spacecraft. They were
+on the alert&mdash;it didn't pay to take anything
+for granted in the Big Vacuum....</p>
+
+<p>The way between the worlds was mostly
+empty space&mdash;except for the outlaws of the
+void who drifted, patiently and vengefully
+waiting for a victim, then struck!</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen and Ramos tensed&mdash;blips on the radar
+screen! Maybe meteors... More blips&mdash;and
+fist-sized chunks of rock flicked through their
+fragile vehicles. Air puffed out ... and Nelson
+and Ramos were fighting for their lives...</p>
+
+<p><b>... A Million Miles Beyond the Moon!</b></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p002">p.&nbsp;2</a></span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom: 4em">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p003">p.&nbsp;3</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h1>THE
+PLANET
+STRAPPERS</h1>
+
+<h2 style="margin-bottom: 6em">Raymond<br>
+Z. Gallun</h2>
+
+<p style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 4em"><b>PYRAMID BOOKS, 444 Madison Avenue, New York 22, New York</b></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p004">p.&nbsp;4</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><b>THE PLANET STRAPPERS,</b><br>
+<i>by Raymond Z. Gallun</i></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Published by Pyramid Books<br>
+First printing: <i>October 1961</i></p>
+
+<p><small><i>Printed in the United States of America</i></small></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p005">p.&nbsp;5</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">I</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Archer Five came in a big packing box,
+bound with steel ribbons and marked, <i>This end up&mdash;handle
+with care</i>. 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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and old Paul, silent in his swivel
+chair&mdash;watched like hawks.</p>
+
+<p>"So who tries it on first?" Ramos challenged. "Dumb question.
+You, Eileen&mdash;naturally."</p>
+
+<p>Most Bunches have a small, hard, ponytailed member,
+dungareed like the rest.</p>
+
+<p>Still kidding around, Ramos dropped an arm across Eileen
+Sands' shoulders, and got her sharp elbow jabbed with vigor
+into his stomach.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p006">p.&nbsp;6</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;even with all
+his talent for mechanics and electronics.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he used to protest that he could at least add two and
+two&mdash;bounced forward, saying, "I'll give yuh a hand, Gimp."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Shucks, Gimp," Storey soothed. "Anybody needs assistance&mdash;the
+first time..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It even <i>smells</i> right, in here," Gimp growled muffledly,
+trying to be nonchalant.</p>
+
+<p>There was loud laughter and clapping. Ramos whistled
+piercingly, with two fingers. The huge Kuzak twins, Art and
+Joe&mdash;both had football scholarships at Tech&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p007">p.&nbsp;7</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>"What do yuh know&mdash;toilet facilities, yet!" Ramos chirped
+with spurious naivete, and there were guffaws which soon died
+out. After all, this <i>was</i> 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&mdash;their all-important
+vacuum armor. They were one more hurdle nearer
+to the stars.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p008">p.&nbsp;8</a></span>
+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&mdash;for whom
+the country should do much more in order to insure its future
+in space&mdash;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&mdash;among
+so many who were disinterested and preoccupied&mdash;or
+a corrupting Socrates who deserved to drink hemlock.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;clearly
+marked $49.95 in the display window&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at a real Archie&mdash;with a friend inside it, even&mdash;did
+this to Frank Nelsen. But he could see similar reactions
+in some of the others.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Did the color photographs of Mars, among all the others
+that the Bunch had thumbtacked to the shop walls, still appeal
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p009">p.&nbsp;9</a></span>
+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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos&mdash;Miguel Ramos Alvarez&mdash;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&mdash;Saturn still unapproached,
+except by small, instrumented rockets&mdash;would be
+the things to appeal to him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p010">p.&nbsp;10</a></span>
+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&mdash;the
+whole Bunch knew.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;somebody had started calling them that,
+a few years ago&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;grimly attentive
+at Tech, and at work at his car-washing job, nights.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;their first space bubble,
+or bubb which they had been cutting and shaping with
+more care and devotion than skill.</p>
+
+<p>"Cripes&mdash;put that damn shiv away, Tif!" Art snapped. "Or
+lose it someplace!"</p>
+
+<p>Ramos, who was a part-time mechanic at the same garage
+where Tiflin worked, couldn't help taunting. "Yeah&mdash;smoking,
+too. Oh-oh. Using up precious oxygen. Better quit, pal. Can't
+do much of that Out There."</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>you</i> care what I do, Mex?" he snarled. "And as for you two
+Hunky Kuzaks&mdash;you oversized bulldozers&mdash;how about weight
+limits for blastoff? Damn&mdash;I don't care <i>how</i> big you are!"</p>
+
+<p>In mounting rage, he was about to lash out with his fists,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p011">p.&nbsp;11</a></span>
+even at the two watchful football men. But then he looked
+surprised. With a terrible effort, he bottled up even his furious
+words.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;aimed at Tiflin's most vulnerable point.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, Gimp&mdash;are you going to sit in that Archie all night?"
+Joe Kuzak, the easy-going twin, boomed genially. "How about
+the rest of us?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah&mdash;how about that, Gimp?" Dave Lester put in, trying
+to sound as brash and bold as the others, instead of just bookish.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>They had won twenty-five hundred dollars during the summer
+for building a working model of a sun-powered ionic
+drive motor&mdash;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&mdash;of all outfits&mdash;a
+big food chain, Trans-Columbia. But this wasn't so strange.
+Everybody was interested in, or affected by, interplanetary
+travel, now.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand bucks&mdash;that's nowhere near enough," Two-and-Two
+mourned further. "Doggone, why can't we get blasted
+up off the Earth&mdash;that costs the most, all by itself&mdash;just in our
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p012">p.&nbsp;12</a></span>
+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!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Cause it isn't legal, otherwise," Mitch Storey pointed out.
+"'Cause new men are green&mdash;it isn't safe for them, otherwise&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;saying contract guys don't stick.
+Nuts&mdash;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 <i>Real Elite</i>&mdash;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&mdash;Harv
+Diamond&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>Joe Kuzak grinned. "So down with 'em&mdash;down with the
+worthy old U.S.S.F.! We're on our own&mdash;to Serenitatis Base
+on the Moon, to the Belt, Pallastown, and farther!"</p>
+
+<p>Ramos still hovered near Eileen Sands. "What do you say,
+Sweetie?" he asked. "You haven't hardly made a comment."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Ramos bowed elegantly, and obeyed the latter half of her
+suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a premonition&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Joe Kuzak, the gentler twin, answered him. "You're right
+about one thing, Les. We'll wind up building most of our own
+stuff&mdash;with our own mitts...!"</p>
+
+<p>Some noisy conversation about who should try the Archer
+next, was interrupted when the antique customer's bell over
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p013">p.&nbsp;13</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, the <i>men</i> have arrived," Jig announced.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, gang," he breezed. "Otto is bringing beer, Pepsi and
+sandwiches from his joint across the street. Special day&mdash;so
+it's on me. Time to relax&mdash;maybe unsnarl. Any new problems?"</p>
+
+<p>"Still plenty of old ones," Frank Nelsen commented laconically.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I guess we're all shaggy folk, bent on high and
+wild living, so far. So you know the only answer we <i>can</i> have."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;there'll be a run on
+them now that they're being almost given away... List all
+the other stuff we need&mdash;with approximate purchase price, or
+cost of construction materials, attached. Sure&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Hell&mdash;you know the lists are ready, Art," Frank Nelsen
+pointed out. "A bubb for everybody&mdash;or the stuff to make it.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p014">p.&nbsp;14</a></span>
+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&mdash;a subsidized
+rate at that&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, certainly, Gimp," Hollins growled.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Likewise," said his brother, Joe. Their signatures were
+both small, in contrast to their size.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin made a fierce, nervous scrawl.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p015">p.&nbsp;15</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mitch Storey wrote patiently, in big, square letters.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it will be the same&mdash;in my case," David Lester
+stammered. He shook so much that his signature was only a
+quavering line.</p>
+
+<p>"For laughs," Eileen Sands said, and wrote daintily.</p>
+
+<p>Two-and-Two Baines gulped, sighed, and made a jagged
+scribble, like the trail of a rocket gone nuts.</p>
+
+<p>Jig Hollins wrote in swooping, arrogant circles, that came,
+perhaps, from his extra jobs as an advertising sky writer with
+an airplane.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen was next, and Charlie Reynolds was last.
+Theirs were the most indistinctive signatures in the lot. Just
+ordinary writing.</p>
+
+<p>"So here we all are, on a piece of paper&mdash;pledged to victory
+or death," Reynolds laughed. "Anyhow, we're out of a rut."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Old Paul Hendricks had come back from waiting on some
+casual customers in the store.</p>
+
+<p>"Want to sign, too, Paul?" Reynolds chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope&mdash;that would make thirteen," Paul answered, his
+eyes twinkling. "I'll watch and listen&mdash;and maybe tell you if
+I think you're off beam."</p>
+
+<p>"Here comes Otto with the beer and sandwiches," Ramos
+burst out.</p>
+
+<p>They all crowded around heavy Otto Kramer and his basket&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;as much as anybody can know without ever having
+been off the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, Paul," Frank called in a low tone, leaning his elbows
+across a workbench.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," Frank Nelsen answered with a lopsided smile.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Grandeur, poetry, music&mdash;for instance, the haunting popular
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p016">p.&nbsp;16</a></span>
+song, <i>Fire Streak</i>, about the burial of a spaceman&mdash;at
+orbital speed&mdash;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&mdash;helping
+to give dangerously crowded humanity on Earth more
+room, dispersal, a chance for race survival, if some unimaginable
+violence were turned loose...</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the names of places Out There. Serenitatis
+Base&mdash;Serene&mdash;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&mdash;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?...</p>
+
+<p>Paul Hendricks had leaned his elbows on the workbench,
+too. "Sure&mdash;<i>nothing</i>&mdash;Frank," he said, and his watery eyes
+were bland.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos said something, and Jig Hollins answered him back.
+"Think there'll be any girls in grass skirts out in the Asteroid
+Belt, Mex?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they'll arrive," Ramos assured him.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Frank Nelsen and Paul Hendricks
+certainly included&mdash;such devices had as much beauty
+as a yacht under full sail had ever had for anybody.</p>
+
+<p>Old Paul smirked with pleasure. "It's a shame, ain't it,
+Frank&mdash;calling a pretty thing like that a 'bubb'&mdash;it's an ugly
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p017">p.&nbsp;17</a></span>
+word. Or even a 'space bubble.' Technical talk gets kind of
+cheap."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind," Frank Nelsen answered. "Our first one,
+here, could look just as nice&mdash;inflated, and riding free against
+the stars."</p>
+
+<p>He touched the crinkly material, draped across its wooden
+support.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>will</i>," the old man promised. "Funny&mdash;not so long ago
+people thought that space ships would have to be really rigid&mdash;all
+metal. So how did they turn out? Made of stellene,
+mostly&mdash;an improved form of polyethylene&mdash;almost the same
+stuff as a weather balloon."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;you've
+got breathing and living room, inside. There's nylon cording
+for increased strength&mdash;as in an automobile tire&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;out of orbit."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <i>had</i> to be expensive.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't rub it in, kid. But I figure on kicking in a couple of
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p018">p.&nbsp;18</a></span>
+thousand bucks, soon, to help you characters along."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen felt an embarrassed lift of hope.</p>
+
+<p>"You shouldn't, Paul," he advised. "We've overrun and
+taken possession of your shop&mdash;almost your store, too. You've
+waived any profit, whenever we've bought anything. That's
+enough favors."</p>
+
+<p>"My dough, my pleasure... Let's each get one of Reynolds'
+beers and hotdogs, if any are left..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Now we know&mdash;a little," he chortled, after he stood again,
+just in his usual garb.</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>"I'll shove off, Paul," Nelsen was saying in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Out under the <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'signficant' in the original text.">significant</ins> 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&mdash;almost
+lugubrious comedy.</p>
+
+<p>"Math again, Two-and-Two? Sure&mdash;shoot."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;that kind is always around&mdash;with me," Two-and-Two
+Baines chuckled shakily. "This is something else&mdash;personal.
+We're liable&mdash;honest to gosh&mdash;to <i>go</i>, aren't we?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some of us, maybe," Nelsen replied warily. "Sixty thousand
+bucks for the whole Bunch looks like a royal heap of
+cabbage to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Split among a dozen guys, it looks smaller," Two-and-Two
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p019">p.&nbsp;19</a></span>
+persisted. "And you can earn royal dough on the Moon&mdash;just
+for example. Plenty to pay back a loan."</p>
+
+<p>"Still, you don't pick loans off trees," Nelsen gruffed. "Not
+for a shoestring crowd like us. We look too unsubstantial."</p>
+
+<p>"Okay, Frank&mdash;have that part your way. I believe there
+still is a good chance we <i>will</i> go. I <i>want</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh&mdash;other people could be having minor second
+thoughts&mdash;including me," Frank Nelsen growled.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't get what I mean, Frank. Sure I'm scared some&mdash;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&mdash;beforehand.
+You're the best, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Frankie." And Two-and-Two was gone.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen looked upward, over the lighted street. There
+was no Moon&mdash;site of many enterprises, these days&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, Franklin Nelsen&mdash;what was that?"</p>
+
+<p>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!</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening, Miss Parks," he greeted rather stiffly. "I
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p020">p.&nbsp;20</a></span>
+think it was that manned weather satellite dumping garbage.
+It hits the atmosphere at orbital velocity, and is incinerated."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to be immensely pleased and amused. "Garbage
+becoming beauty! That is rather wonderful, Franklin. I'll remember.
+Thank you and good night."</p>
+
+<p>She marched off with the small purchase she had made, in
+the direction opposite his own.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, Nance," he said. "I didn't get much supper. Let's go
+down to Lehman's for a hamburger and maybe a soda."</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;<i>good</i>&mdash;Frankie!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear you fellas got your space-armor sample, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"Yep&mdash;we did. We're ordering more."</p>
+
+<p>Her expression became speculative. Her brown eyes lighted.
+"I've been wondering if I should look Outward, too. Whether
+it makes sense&mdash;for a girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Could be&mdash;I've heard."</p>
+
+<p>Their conversation went something like that, throughout,
+with long silences. Finally she smiled at him, very brightly.</p>
+
+<p>"The Junior Fall dance is in two weeks," she said. "But I
+guess you'll be too busy to be interested?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Guess' just isn't the word, Nance. I regret that&mdash;truly."</p>
+
+<p>He looked and sounded as though he meant it. In some
+crazy way, it seemed that he <i>did</i> mean it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, he slept the dreamless sleep of the just&mdash;if there
+was any particular reason for him to consider himself just.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p021">p.&nbsp;21</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">II</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>By late afternoon the Bunch had folded up the bubb again,
+and were simulating its practice launching from a ground-to-orbit
+rocket&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>This was soon literally true. In some embarrassment, the
+Bunch rolled up their bubb and lugged it into the shop.</p>
+
+<p>"I can borrow a construction compressor unit on a truck,"
+Two-and-Two offered. "And there's a farm I know..."</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p022">p.&nbsp;22</a></span>
+Sheet aluminum to be spun and curved and polished. With
+Eileen Sands helping, Gimp Hines would do most of that.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Destiny. Sleep was least important&mdash;a
+few hours, long after midnight, usually.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen figured that he had it relatively easy&mdash;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'&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to count!" he would moan.
+"Thanks, all you good people, for coaching me in my math."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;your
+Grandpappy didn't come through, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p023">p.&nbsp;23</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm with Charlie," Joe Kuzak commented.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't fight, guys&mdash;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&mdash;you, too, Jig&mdash;get your cars and let's go!
+It's only seven miles, and we all need a break."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos let himself and the scooter through a massive, curved
+door&mdash;conforming to the curvature of the walls&mdash;at the base
+of the 'drome.</p>
+
+<p>"Secure the latch bar of this door from the outside, fellas,"
+he said. "Then go to the gallery around the top to watch."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you
+try it first&mdash;ride with me&mdash;then alone&mdash;when you get the
+hang of it!..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then it was David Lester's turn. It was a foregone conclusion
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p024">p.&nbsp;24</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Darn!" he choked in some infinite protest, beating the
+ground with his fists. "Damn&mdash;that's the end of it for me...!
+So soon... Pop..."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll drive you to Doc Miller's, Les," Charlie Reynolds said
+briskly. "Then home. You other people better stay here..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;not much color. Of course she was scared, and mad
+clean through. Know her?"</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>Warily, back at the shop, the Bunch told Paul what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>driven</i>&mdash;somehow. Lucky nothing too bad happened. Last
+August, when you romantics got serious about space, I made
+him prove he was over twenty-one..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The dozen Archers were delivered&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p025">p.&nbsp;25</a></span>
+in the back of the shop. He meant to compensate for his bad
+leg by improving his shoulder muscles.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;selling it wouldn't bring one tenth enough, anyhow.
+I'll get what we need&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>our</i> fault?"</p>
+
+<p>Hollins was trying to taunt Reynolds. "You're tiresome,
+Jig," Reynolds said without heat. "Somebody's going to poke
+you sometime..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen felt a tingle in his nerves&mdash;very cold.</p>
+
+<p>"Hi&mdash;what cooks, Tif?" he said mildly.</p>
+
+<p>"To you it's which?" Tiflin snapped.</p>
+
+<p>Nelson led him on. "Sometimes I think of all the dough
+in that bank," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," Tiflin snarled softly. "That old coot, Charlie Reynolds'
+grandpa, sitting by his vault door. Too obvious, though&mdash;here.
+Maybe in another bank&mdash;in another town. We could
+get the cash we need. Hell, though&mdash;be cavalier&mdash;it's just a
+thought."</p>
+
+<p>"You damned fool!" Nelsen hissed slowly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p026">p.&nbsp;26</a></span>
+about, around Jarviston. J. John, by reputation, was all hard
+business.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen got past his secretary.</p>
+
+<p>"Young man&mdash;I hope you have something very special to
+say."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Reynolds&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>J. John Reynolds seemed to doze, hardly listening. But at
+the end his eyes opened, and sparks of anger&mdash;or acid humor&mdash;seemed
+to dance in them.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;other than my grandson with his
+undiluted brass, and knowing me far too well in one sense,
+anyway&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<i>young</i>, 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."</p>
+
+<p>This whole encounter was still dreamlike to Frank Nelsen.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you are saying yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might. Do you foolishly imagine that my soul is so completely
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p027">p.&nbsp;27</a></span>
+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&mdash;at minimum, mind you&mdash;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&mdash;you must know."</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty thousand," Frank answered quickly. "There are still
+eleven in our group."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes... More may quit along the way... Here is <i>my</i>
+proposition: I would make funds available for your expenses
+up to that amount&mdash;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&mdash;with an experimental
+element. I will ask for no written contract&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;will you, yourself, promise to abide by
+these terms?"</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen was wary for a second. "Yes&mdash;I promise," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the
+future. Now get out of here before you become ridiculous
+by saying more than a casual thanks."</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;thanks. Thank you, sir..."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen felt somewhat numb. But a faint, golden glow was
+increasing inside his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin hadn't gone up to Tech. He was still waiting on the
+street corner. "What the hell, Frank?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;above all&mdash;avoid blowing your top?
+Boy&mdash;if you queer this...!"</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin's mouth was open. "You kidding?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p028">p.&nbsp;28</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Tiflin gulped, and actually looked subdued. "Okay, Frank.
+Be cavalier. Hell, I'd croak before I'd mess this up...!"</p>
+
+<p>By evening, everybody had visited J. John Reynolds, including
+Charlie Reynolds and Jig Hollins. Nelsen got the
+backslapping treatment.</p>
+
+<p>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...?"</p>
+
+<p>Otto had a bottle&mdash;enough for a taste, all around. Eileen
+kissed Frank impulsively. "You ought to get <i>real</i> smart," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh," he answered. "Now let's get some beer&mdash;more
+our speed."</p>
+
+<p>But none of them overdid the beer either...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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'.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Hell, we know all that, Harv," Ramos laughed.</p>
+
+<p>So Harv Diamond gave them the lowdown on the shortage
+of girls&mdash;yet&mdash;in Serenitatis Base, on the Moon. Just the same,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p029">p.&nbsp;29</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>Gimp asked Harv how much leave he had on Earth.</p>
+
+<p>"Not long, I guess," Harv laughed. "I've got to check back
+at the Force Hospital in Minneapolis tomorrow..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Bunch surrounded him, wanting to help, but he half
+recovered.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;almost buttoned into my Archer Six,
+already. <i>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?</i> That was my buddy, Ed
+Kraft..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>That incident shook up the Bunch a little. A worse one
+came on a Tuesday evening, when not everybody was at the
+shop.</p>
+
+<p>The TV was on, showing the interior of the <i>Far Side</i>, one
+of those big, comparatively luxurious tour bubbs that take
+rubbernecks that can afford it on a swing around the Moon.
+The <i>Far Side</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But Frank Nelsen somehow put his hands to his head, as if
+to protect it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p030">p.&nbsp;30</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mitch Storey, with a big piece of stellene in his brown mitts,
+stood up very straight.</p>
+
+<p>Gimp, at a bench, handed a tiny capacitor to Eileen, and
+started counting, slow and even. "One&mdash;two&mdash;three&mdash;four&mdash;five&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What's with you slobs?" Jig Hollins wanted to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Dunno&mdash;we're nuts, maybe," Gimp answered. "Ten&mdash;eleven&mdash;twelve&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Charlie Reynolds and Paul Hendricks were alert, too.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Far Side</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we go!" Charlie Reynolds yelled.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>Far Side</i>'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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;like a ceramic nose cone. Kept it from
+burning up completely."</p>
+
+<p>The thing was a lady's silver compact, from which a large
+piece had been fused away. A bobbypin had gotten welded
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>Old Paul Hendricks cursed. Poor Two-and-Two moved off
+sickly, with a palm clamped over his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p031">p.&nbsp;31</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Ramos gave the pathetic relic to a cop who was trying to
+take charge.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody must have goofed bad on the <i>Far Side</i>, for it to
+miss orbit like that," Ramos grated. "Or was something wrong,
+beforehand? Their TV transmitter went out&mdash;we were watching,
+too, at the garage... You can see the aurora&mdash;the
+Northern Lights... Those damn solar storms might have
+loused up instruments...! But who'll ever know, now...?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;eh,
+Reynolds? And staying near granddad?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Ninnies that get scared first thing, when the facts begin
+to show!" Tiflin snarled. "Cripes&mdash;let's don't be like soft bugs
+under boards!"</p>
+
+<p>"You're right, Tif," Frank Nelsen agreed, feeling that for
+once the ne'er-do-well&mdash;the nuisance&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Far Side</i> 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..."</p>
+
+<p>"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...!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p032">p.&nbsp;32</a></span>
+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&mdash;the
+easy letdown.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all, Mister," the observer with the camera told Nelsen
+in a bored tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Results will be mailed to your home within twelve hours&mdash;Mr.
+Nelsen," a girl informed him as she read his name from
+a printed card.</p>
+
+<p>So the Bunch returned tensely to Jarviston, with more time
+to sweat out. Everybody looked at Gimp Hines&mdash;and then
+looked away. Even Jig Hollins didn't make any comments.
+Gimp, himself, seemed pretty subdued.</p>
+
+<p>The small, green space-fitness cards were arriving at Jarviston
+addresses in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>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!&mdash;Hi-di-ho&mdash;here it is!" he was yelling at the frosty
+sky, when Frank came with his own ticket.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos had to make a noise. "See what Santa brought the
+lady! But he didn't forget your Uncle Miguel, either&mdash;see!
+We're in, kid&mdash;be happy. Yippee!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess legs don't count, Out There," Gimp was saying. "Or
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p033">p.&nbsp;33</a></span>
+patched tickers, either, as long as they work good! I kind of
+figured on it... Hey&mdash;I don't want to ride anybody's
+shoulders, Ramos&mdash;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&mdash;where's Tif? He should be back by now
+from where he lives with his father..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Just leave Tif be," Mitch Storey said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe that's best, at that," old Paul growled. "Only I hope
+the darned idiot doesn't cook himself up another jam..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;which had seemed so lenient&mdash;had
+tripped him up, spotting the weakness that he had tried to
+fight. Temper, nerves&mdash;emotional instability. So there was no
+green card for Tif, to whom space was a kind of Nirvana...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;right in your own home town&mdash;that's
+the only sense there is. Minnie showed me that, and
+we're gonna get married!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;back me up&mdash;quit!
+Don't see through me&mdash;it's not so, anyhow! Don't say I'm
+hiding behind a skirt... Above all, don't call me yellow! I'm
+<i>not</i> yellow, I tell you! I'm tough Jig Hollins! You're the
+dopes!...</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen spoke for the others. "We understand, Jig.
+We'll be getting you a little wedding present. Later on, maybe
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p034">p.&nbsp;34</a></span>
+we'll be able to send you something really good. Best of
+luck..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor sap," Joe Kuzak breathed. "Who's he kidding&mdash;us
+or himself, or neither...?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>She tossed down a fistful of waste with which she had been
+wiping her hands&mdash;she had been cementing segments of the
+last of the ten bubbs they would make&mdash;more than they
+needed, now, but spares might be useful.</p>
+
+<p>"Okay, all," she said briskly. "You should hear this, without
+any further delay. I'm clearing out, too. Reasons? Well&mdash;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&mdash;I don't really believe it's so, and if it isn't so
+you're tough enough not to be hurt. Far worse&mdash;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&mdash;most of which he paid for. But perhaps I'll
+still be able to give him his ten percent."</p>
+
+<p>"Eileen! Cripes, what are you talking about?" This was
+Ramos yelping, as if the clown could be hurt, after all.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;taking some pleasant memories
+with me, as well as a space-fitness card. You're all good,
+plodding joes&mdash;honest. But there'll be a plane west from Minneapolis
+tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p035">p.&nbsp;35</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"So long, you characters," she said. "Good luck. Don't
+follow me outside. Maybe I'll see you, someplace."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, Eileen&mdash;we'll miss yuh," Storey said. "And we better
+sure enough see you that someplace!"</p>
+
+<p>There were ragged shouts. "Good luck, kid. So long,
+Eileen..."</p>
+
+<p>She was gone&mdash;a small, scared, determined figure, dressed
+like a boy. On her wrist was a watch that might get pawned for
+a plane ticket.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;we'll last," he would
+growl. "Final, long lap&mdash;March, April and May&mdash;with no
+more interruptions. In June, when our courses at Tech are finished,
+we'll be ready to roll..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The blastoff tickets had also been purchased&mdash;for June
+tenth.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, how do you think the Bunch should travel to New
+Mexico, Paul?" Frank Nelsen joshed.</p>
+
+<p>"Like other Bunches, I guess," Paul Hendricks laughed. "A
+couple of moving vans should do the trick..."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p036">p.&nbsp;36</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">III</h2>
+
+
+<p>On June first, ten days before blastoff, David
+Lester came back to the shop, sheepishness, pleasure and worry
+showing in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-uh, Les&mdash;I'm sure that's okay," Ramos grunted.
+"Right, fellas?"</p>
+
+<p>The others nodded.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll order you a blastoff ticket, Les," Frank Nelsen said.
+"In one of the two GOs&mdash;ground-to-orbit rockets&mdash;reserved
+for us. The space is still there..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p037">p.&nbsp;37</a></span>
+he returned, he solemnly gave his well-worn vehicle to an
+earnest boy still in high school.</p>
+
+<p>"No dough," Ramos said. "I just want her to have a good
+home."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"You try any stunt like that and I'll shoot you," Frank Nelsen
+promised. "Things are going to be complicated enough."</p>
+
+<p>"You always tell me no, Frank," Two-and-Two mourned.</p>
+
+<p>"I know something else," said Joe Kuzak&mdash;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&mdash;and lost. Kind of
+a good guy&mdash;someways..."</p>
+
+<p>The big Kuzaks, usually easy and steady and not too comical,
+both had a certain kind of expression, now&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't hear anything; I won't say or do anything," he
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, under the pressure of events, he forgot the
+whole matter.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p038">p.&nbsp;38</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I have made up a basket of sandwiches for you and your
+comrades, Lester," she said.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a more wistful and worshipping
+pair would have been hard to imagine.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"One for you, Reynolds," he said. "Also one for you, Nelsen.
+They just came&mdash;ordinarily I wouldn't deliver them till
+tomorrow morning. But you see how it is."</p>
+
+<p>A long, white envelope was in Frank Nelsen's hands. In its
+upper left-hand corner was engraved:</p>
+
+<blockquote>UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE<br>
+RECRUITING SECTION<br>
+WASHINGTON, D.C.</blockquote>
+
+<p>"Jeez, Frankie&mdash;Charlie&mdash;you made it&mdash;open 'em, quick!"
+Two-and-Two said.</p>
+
+<p>Frank was about to do so. But everybody knew exactly what
+was inside such an envelope&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank felt the lift of maybe being one of&mdash;well&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Que milagro!</i>&mdash;holy cow!" Ramos breathed. "Charlie&mdash;Frankie&mdash;congratulations!"</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p039">p.&nbsp;39</a></span>
+this all goof ball sentiment in his own mind, to make himself
+feel real modest?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Charlie's and his eyes met for a second, in understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>They both handed the envelopes back to Roy Harder.</p>
+
+<p>The voices of their Bunch-mates jangled in a conflicting
+chorus.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;yuh damfools!" Two-and-Two bleated.</p>
+
+<p>"Good for them!" Art Kuzak said, perhaps mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey&mdash;they're us&mdash;they'll stay with us&mdash;shut up&mdash;didn't
+we lose enough people, already?" Gimp said.</p>
+
+<p>Frank grinned with half of his mouth. "We always needed
+a name," he remarked. "How about <i>The Planet Strappers</i>?
+Hell&mdash;if the chairborne echelon of the U.S.S.F. is so slow and
+picky, let 'em go sit on a sunspot."</p>
+
+<p>"I need some white paint and a brush, Paul," Ramos declared,
+running into the shop.</p>
+
+<p>In a couple of minutes more, the name for the Bunch was
+crudely and boldly lettered on the sides of both trucks.</p>
+
+<p>"Salute your ladies, shake hands with your neighbors, and
+then let's get moving," Charlie Reynolds laughed genially.</p>
+
+<p>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...!"</p>
+
+<p>There were quick movements here and there&mdash;a kiss, a
+touch of hands, a small gesture, a strained glance.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen was perched on his neatly packed blastoff
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p040">p.&nbsp;40</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>So that was how the Bunch left Jarviston, on a June evening
+that smelled of fresh-cut hay and car fumes&mdash;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&mdash;neat
+streets, houses, beds, Saturday nights, dances, struggling
+for a dream at Hendricks'&mdash;that even if they survived the
+change, the difference must seem a little like death.</p>
+
+<p>Seeking the lifting thread of magical romance again, Frank
+Nelsen looked up at the ribbed canvas top of the truck. "Covered
+wagon," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure&mdash;Indians&mdash;boom-boom," Two-and-Two chuckled,
+brightening. "Wild West... Yeah&mdash;<i>wild</i>&mdash;that's a word I
+kind of like."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><i>"Adios, Mujer&mdash;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Adios para siempre&mdash;</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Adios..."</i></p>
+
+<p>Ramos wailed out the last syllable with lugubrious emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>"Always it's girls," Dave Lester managed to chuckle. "I still
+don't see how they expect to find many, Out There."</p>
+
+<p>"If our Eileen has&mdash;or will&mdash;make it, she won't be the first&mdash;or
+last," Frank offered, almost mystically.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey&mdash;I was right about the word, <i>wild</i>," Two-and-Two
+mused. "Yeah&mdash;we're all just plum-full of wanting to be wild.
+Not <i>mean</i> wild, mostly&mdash;constructive wild, instead. And,
+damn, we'll <i>do</i> it...! Cripes&mdash;we ought to come back to old
+Paul's place in June, ten years from now, and tell each other
+what we've accomplished."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn&mdash;that's a fine idea, Two-and-Two!" David Lester
+piped up. "I'll suggest it to the other guys, first chance I
+get...!"</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p041">p.&nbsp;41</a></span>
+had to believe it, to combat the icy sliver of dread concerning
+an event that was getting very near, now.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Storey stopped, abashed. He grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"Reaching for Out There, Mitch?" Frank Nelsen asked.
+"Music of your own, to tell about space? Got any words for
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nope," Mitch said. "Maybe it shouldn't have any words.
+Anyhow, the tune doesn't come clear, yet. I haven't been&mdash;There."</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe some more of Otto's beer will help," Frank suggested.
+"Here&mdash;one can, each, to begin." For once, Frank had
+an urge to get slightly pie-eyed.</p>
+
+<p>"High's a good word," he amended. "High and sky! Mars
+and stars!"</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But at last, Gimp Hines, remembering wisdom, spoke up.
+"We're supposed to be under mild sedation&mdash;a devil-killer, a
+tranquilizer&mdash;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&mdash;down, with the last of my
+beer..."</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p042">p.&nbsp;42</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"They're us&mdash;up the old roller coaster!" Charlie Reynolds
+shouted.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Ground-to-Orbit. But it might as well
+mean go! glory, or gallows, he thought.</p>
+
+<p>The trucks reached the gate. The Bunch met the bored and
+cynical reception committee&mdash;a half-dozen U.S.S.F. men in
+radiation coveralls.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the unknowing standing vulnerable before
+the knowing and perhaps harsh.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen guessed at some of the significance of the looks they
+all received: Another batch of greenhorns&mdash;to conquer and
+develop and populate the extra-terrestrial regions. They all
+come the same way, and look alike. Poor saps...</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p043">p.&nbsp;43</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen longed to paste somebody, even in the absence
+of absolute impoliteness.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Nine men&mdash;ten drums&mdash;how come?" one of the U.S.S.F.
+people inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"A spare. Its GO carriage charge is paid," Reynolds answered.</p>
+
+<p>He got an amused and tired smirk. "Okay, Sexy&mdash;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&mdash;tentatively&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p><ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: this is a single quotation mark in the original text.">"</ins>Sure&mdash;we see&mdash;thanks. Yes&mdash;the Moon." This was still
+Charlie Reynolds talking.</p>
+
+<p>"No problem, then, Sexy. We mean to be gentle. Now let's
+move along, in line. Never mind consulting wristwatches&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The U.S.S.F. spokesman was still with them. "All right&mdash;armor
+up. Let's see how good you are at it."</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>"Okay&mdash;time to move!"</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p044">p.&nbsp;44</a></span>
+own private sweating party. The padded passenger compartments
+were above the blastoff drum freight sections.</p>
+
+<p>"Helmets secure? Air-restorer systems on? Phones working?
+Answer roll call if you hear me. Baines, George?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" Two-and-Two responded, loud and plain in Frank
+Nelsen's phone, from the other rocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Hines, Walter?"</p>
+
+<p>One by one the names were called... "Kuzak, Arthur?...
+Kuzak, Joseph?..."</p>
+
+<p>"Okay&mdash;the Mystic Nine, eh? Lash down!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector swaggered around among them, jerking straps,
+and tapping shoulders and buttocks straight on the floor
+padding with a boot toe.</p>
+
+<p>"All right&mdash;not good, not too bad. Ease off&mdash;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&mdash;in orbit,
+on the Moon, anyplace. We'll call some of your shots from the
+ground. Good luck&mdash;and Glory help you..."</p>
+
+<p>The growl in their phones died away with the muffled footsteps.
+Doors closed on their gaskets and were dogged, automatically.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;<i>for</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p045">p.&nbsp;45</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The doors of the passenger compartments had opened; likewise
+the blastoff drums had been ejected automatically, and
+were orbiting free.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>was</i> falling,
+around the Earth, his forward motion exactly balancing his
+downward motion, in a locked ellipse, a closed trajectory.</p>
+
+<p>His mind cleared very fast&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank, I&mdash;I even dirtied myself..."</p>
+
+<p>"So what? Over there is your gear, Two-and-Two&mdash;go get
+it!" Frank shouted into his phone, the receiver of which was
+now full of sounds&mdash;a moaning grunt, a vast hiccuping, shouts,
+exhortations.</p>
+
+<p>"Easy, Les," Reynolds was saying. "Can you reach a pill
+from the rack inside your chest plate, and swallow it? Just
+float quietly&mdash;nothing'll happen. We've got work to do for a
+few minutes... We'll look after you later... Cripes, Mitch&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p046">p.&nbsp;46</a></span>
+from the air-flasks to a firm and beautiful circle, attaching the
+rigging, the fine, radial spokewires&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Spin 'em!" Gimp shouted. "Don't forget to spin 'em for
+centrifuge-gravity and stability!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We've made it&mdash;we're Out Here&mdash;we're all right!" Ramos
+was shouting with a fierce exultation.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, Ramos!" Frank Nelsen yelled back. "Don't ever
+say that, too soon. Look around you!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly, pushed by their shoulder ionics, Gimp, Ramos and
+Frank Nelsen drifted over to see what they could do for
+Lester.</p>
+
+<p>He was vaguely conscious, his eyes were glassy, his mouth
+drooled watery vomit.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know!" Lester wailed in a hoarse voice. "Fellas&mdash;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&mdash;I can't ever
+live with myself!..."</p>
+
+<p>Frank felt the intense anguish of trying to decide somebody
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p047">p.&nbsp;47</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>did</i> pass his space-fitness tests, and
+the experts ought to know."</p>
+
+<p>With the three of them at it, and with the Kuzaks joining
+them in a moment, the job was quickly finished.</p>
+
+<p>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?..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a height full of dazzling, unnatural
+sunshine, that in moments would become the dreadful darkness
+of Earth's shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey&mdash;our spare drum&mdash;it'll drift off!" Ramos shouted.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;part
+of the bubb packed inside&mdash;and a thin, angry face
+with rather hysterical eyes, within the helmet of an Archer
+Five.</p>
+
+<p>"Shhh&mdash;it ain't safe for me to come out yet," Glen Tiflin
+hissed threateningly. "Damn you all&mdash;if you dare queer
+me...!"</p>
+
+<p>"Cripes&mdash;another Jonah!" Charlie Reynolds growled.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen looked at the Kuzaks, floating near.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p048">p.&nbsp;48</a></span>
+of drum contents at the gate of the port. But he was there on
+a visitor's pass, waiting&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Okay&mdash;I'll buy it," Reynolds sighed heavily. "Good luck
+with the stunt, Tif."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Food, yet&mdash;ugh!" Art Kuzak grunted.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then everybody crawled into their respective bubbs, most
+of them needing the centrifugal gravity to help straighten out
+their fall-sickness.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>For a few minutes it seemed that they had a small respite
+in their struggle for adjustment to a fantastic environment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I got cleaned up, some&mdash;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&mdash;when he hasn't ever been any
+farther than Minneapolis?" Two-and-Two sounded fabulously
+befuddled.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p049">p.&nbsp;49</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go look," Frank Nelsen said.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"We'd better," Frank answered quickly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>wants</i> to get sent back?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>For a second of intolerable fury, Frank wanted to tear
+Tiflin apart.</p>
+
+<p>But Mitch half-grinned. "That might be an answer," he said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was soon plain that Joe Kuzak's bubb, towing Tiflin's
+drum, would lag.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;Tiflin!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nuts&mdash;I'm looking after Pantywaist," Tiflin growled back.</p>
+
+<p>"Awright," Art returned. "So we just cast your junk adrift!
+Come on, boy!" There was no kidding in the dry tone.</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin snarled but obeyed.</p>
+
+<p>Ions jetting from the Earthward hub-ends of the rotating
+rings, yielded their steady few pounds of thrust. The gradual
+outward spiral began.</p>
+
+<p>"Cripes&mdash;I'm not sure I can even astrogate to the Moon,"
+Two-and-Two was heard to complain.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll check your ionic setting for you, Two-and-Two," Gimp
+answered him. "After that the acceleration should continue
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p050">p.&nbsp;50</a></span>
+properly without much attention. So how about you and me
+taking first watch, while the others ease off a little...?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Someone muttered a prayer in a foreign tongue:</p>
+
+<p>"... <i>Nuestra Dama de Guadalupe&mdash;te pido, por favor...
+Tengo miedo</i>&mdash;I'm scared... <i>Pero pienso mas en ella</i>&mdash;I
+think more of her. <i>Mi chula, mi linda</i>... My beautiful Eileen...
+Keep her&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The prayer broke off, as if a switch was turned. It had been
+brash Ramos... Now there were only some fragments of
+harmonica music...</p>
+
+<p>Frank slipped into the blur, again, awakening at last with
+Two-and-Two shaking his shoulder. "Hey, Frankie&mdash;we're five
+hours out, by the chronometers&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos' bubb was spinning once more, but he was wearing
+just dungarees. The Bunch&mdash;the Planet Strappers&mdash;with only
+their helmets off, were crouched, evenly spaced, around the
+circular interior of the ring. Dave Lester was there, too&mdash;staring,
+but fairly calm, now. In this curious place, there was
+a delicious and improbable aroma of coffee&mdash;cooked by mirror-reflected
+sunlight on a tiny solar stove.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Stew, warmed in the cans, too," Ramos declared. "Enough
+for a light one-time-around. I brought the stew along. Hope
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p051">p.&nbsp;51</a></span>
+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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;almost no friction. Rig some mirrors to concentrate
+the sun's heat. Space Force men do things like that."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up&mdash;I'm getting <i>hong</i>-gry!" Art Kuzak roared.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"That's all for now, folks," Ramos said ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin snaked a cigarette out from inside the collar of his
+Archer.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey!" Reynolds said mildly. "Oxygen, remember? Shouldn't
+you ask our host, first?"</p>
+
+<p>Ramos had eased up on ribbing Tiflin months ago. "It's
+okay," he said. "The air-restorers are new."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Kuzaks had Tiflin helpless and snarling, at once.</p>
+
+<p>"Get a patch, somebody&mdash;fix up the hole," Joe, the mild
+one, growled. "Tiflin&mdash;me and my brother helped you. Now
+we're gonna sit on you&mdash;just to make sure your funny business
+doesn't kill us all. Try anything just <i>once</i>, and we'll feed
+you all that vacuum&mdash;without an Archer. If you're a good boy,
+maybe you'll live to get dumped on the Moon as we pass by."</p>
+
+<p>"Nuts&mdash;let's give this sick rat to the Space Force right
+now." Art Kuzak hissed. "Here comes their patrol bubb."</p>
+
+<p>The glinting, transparent ring with the barred white star
+was passing at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>"All is well with you novices?" The enquiring voice was a
+gruff drawl, mingled with crunching sounds of eating&mdash;perhaps
+a candy bar.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" Tiflin whispered, pleading. "I'll watch myself!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p052">p.&nbsp;52</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for the most part&mdash;passively opposed
+forces, on Earth, and far beyond. But through the
+darkened transparency of stellene, the armored figures&mdash;again
+somewhat sinister&mdash;only raised their hands in greeting.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank Nelsen to Paul Hendricks," he said. "Frank Nelsen
+to Paul Hendricks..."</p>
+
+<p>Paul was waiting, all right. "Hello, Frankie. Some of the
+guys talked already&mdash;said you were asleep."</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, Paul&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;everybody..."</p>
+
+<p>The squeak of hinges and the jingling came through, clear
+and nostalgically.</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Frank," Two-and-Two urged. "Other guys would
+like to talk to Paul... Hey, Paul&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>When the talk got private, Frank went to Mitch Storey's
+bubb.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>Nope&mdash;Mitch couldn't get away from vegetation, even in
+space.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p053">p.&nbsp;53</a></span>
+or inattentive. Always at hand were loaded rifles, because you
+never knew what kind of space-soured men&mdash;who might once
+have been as tame as neighbors going for a drive on Sundays
+with their families&mdash;might be around, even here.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody took to Ramos' kind of <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'exercize' in the original text.">exercise</ins>, bouncing
+around inside a bubb&mdash;even Lester, who was calmer, now,
+but obviously strained by the vast novelty and uncertainty
+ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"I gave you guys a hard time&mdash;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&mdash;going here and there. And if
+I get a job at Serenitatis Base, I think I'll be okay."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Sleep was a fitful, dream-haunted thing. Food was now
+mostly a kind of gruel, rich in starches, proteins, fats and
+vitamins&mdash;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&mdash;heat and eat. The spaceman's usual
+diet, while afield...</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>Charlie Reynolds sat with Frank Nelsen while he listened.
+"The lady has a swell voice," said Charlie. "Otherwise, it
+<i>sounds</i> good, too. But I'm one that's going farther. To Venus&mdash;just
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p054">p.&nbsp;54</a></span>
+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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>That was Charlie, talking to him&mdash;Frank Nelsen&mdash;like an
+older brother. It made a sharp doubt in him, again. But then
+he grinned.</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe I am a slow starter," he said. "The Moon is near
+and humble, but some say it's good training&mdash;even harsher
+than space. And I don't want to bypass and miss anything.
+Oh, hell, Charlie&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>we</i> last...? Mex, did you toss Tiflin back his shiv?"</p>
+
+<p>"A couple of hours ago," Ramos answered mildly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The nine fragile rings were soon in orbit. One worker-recruiting
+rocket and several trader-rockets&mdash;much less powerful
+than those needed to achieve orbit around Earth&mdash;because
+lunar gravity was only one-sixth of the terrestrial&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p055">p.&nbsp;55</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The Kuzaks were palavering with the occupants of two
+heavily-loaded trader rockets. "Sure we'll buy&mdash;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&mdash;anything we can sell, ourselves..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;we know your names.
+We investigate, beforehand, down on terra firma. We even
+have people to snap photographs&mdash;often you don't even notice.
+We like guys with talent who get out here by their own efforts.
+Shows they got guts&mdash;seriousness! But now you've arrived.
+We are Lunar Projects Placement. We need mechanics, process
+technicians, administrative personnel&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>"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?</p>
+
+<p>"Hell, yes, fella!" said the job scout.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I'll sign."</p>
+
+<p>"Excellent... You, too, guy?" The scout was looking at
+Frank. "And your other friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thinking about it," Frank answered cagily. "Some of
+them aren't stopping on the Moon, as you can see."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all set, Frank!" Two-and-Two shouted. "I'm going
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p056">p.&nbsp;56</a></span>
+along with Charlie, maybe to crash the Venus exploration
+party!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good!" Frank shouted back, glad that this large, unsure
+person had found himself a leader.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey&mdash;hold on, Les!" Two-and-Two shouted. "You gotta
+know where you're going, first!"</p>
+
+<p>"Make up your mind, Nelsen," said the job scout, getting
+impatient. "We handle just about everything lunar&mdash;except
+in the Tovie areas. Without us, you're just a lost, fresh punk!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Xavier Rodan," he said. "I search out my own employees.
+I do minerals survey&mdash;for gypsum, bauxite&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;Mr. Nelsen,
+is it?"</p>
+
+<p>Frank had an impulse to jump at the chance&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try it, Mr. Rodan," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Selenography&mdash;that's one of my favorite subjects, sir!"
+David Lester burst out, making a gingerly leap across the horrible
+void of spherical sky&mdash;stars in all directions except where
+the Moon's bulk hung. "Could I&mdash;too?" His trembling mouth
+looked desperate.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, boy," Rodan said at last. "A hundred dollars
+for a week's work period."</p>
+
+<p>Frank was glad that Lester had a place to go&mdash;and furious
+that he would probably have to nursemaid him, after all.</p>
+
+<p>Gimp Hines kept riding the rim of his ring like a merry-go-round,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p057">p.&nbsp;57</a></span>
+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&mdash;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&mdash;some, anyway. Will fifty bucks get me and my rig
+down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Talk to our pilot, Lame Fella," said the job scout. "But
+you must be suicidal nuts to be around here at all."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Gloved hands clasped gloved hands all around. The Bunch,
+the Planet Strappers, were breaking up.</p>
+
+<p>"So long, you characters&mdash;see you around," said Art Kuzak.
+"It won't be ten years, before you all wind up in the Belt."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring back the Mystery of Mars, Mitch!" Frank was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"When you get finished Mooning, come to Venus, Lover
+Lad," Reynolds told Ramos. "But good luck!"</p>
+
+<p>"Jeez&mdash;I'm gonna get sentimental," Two-and-Two moaned.
+"Luck everybody. Come on, Charlie&mdash;let's roll! I don't want
+to slobber!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll catch up with you all&mdash;watch!" Gimp promised.</p>
+
+<p>"So long, Frank..."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah&mdash;over the Milky Way, Frankie!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Hasta luego</i>, Gang." This was all Ramos, the big mouth,
+had to say. He wasn't glum, exactly. But he was sort of preoccupied
+and impatient.</p>
+
+<p>The five remaining rings&mdash;a wonderful sight, Frank thought&mdash;began
+to move out of orbit. Ships with sails set for far ports.
+No&mdash;mere ships of the sea were nothing, anymore. But would
+all of the Bunch survive?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Mitch Storey's bubb, lightest loaded, was jumping ahead.
+But you could hear him playing <i>Old Man River</i> on his mouth
+organ, inside his helmet.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The job scout's rocket, carrying Ramos and Gimp, began
+to flame for a landing at Serene.</p>
+
+<p>In the airtight cabin of Xavier Rodan's vehicle, Frank
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p058">p.&nbsp;58</a></span>
+Nelsen and David Lester had read and signed their contracts
+and had received their copies.</p>
+
+<p>Rodan didn't smile. "Now we'll go down and have a look
+at the place I'm investigating," he said.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen's view of empire-building on
+the Moon was brief, all encompassing, and far too sketchy to be
+very satisfying, as Rodan&mdash;turned about in his universal-gimbaled
+pilot seat&mdash;spiralled his battered rocket down backwards,
+with the small nuclear jets firing forward in jerky, tooth-cracking
+bursts, to check speed further.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, Nelsen glimpsed much territory&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p059">p.&nbsp;59</a></span>
+But now, to a lone man down there, they would be bleak
+plains stretching to a disconcertingly near horizon.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;<i>how about Lester?</i></p>
+
+<p>Frank looked around him. Like Rodan, Lester and he had
+both pivoted around in their gimbaled seats&mdash;to which they
+had safety-strapped themselves&mdash;to face the now forward-pointing
+stern jets.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank thought of these things as the long minutes dragged.
+Perhaps Rodan, hunched intently over his controls, had reason
+enough, there, to be silent...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you men know where you are?" Rodan asked after a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"At the edge of Mare Nova, I think," Frank answered, his
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p060">p.&nbsp;60</a></span>
+eyes combing the demons' landscape beyond the thick,
+darkened glass of the cabin's ports.</p>
+
+<p>The dazzling sun was low&mdash;early morning of two weeks of
+daylight. The shadows were long, black shafts.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;there's Tower Rock," Lester quavered. "And the
+Arabian Range going down under the dust of the plain."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen felt the dust crunch under the rubberized
+boot-soles of his Archer. There was a brief walk, then a pause.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;which is fortunate. They think I'm
+still looking, and aren't concerned..."</p>
+
+<p>Rodan was quiet for a moment before continuing. The pupils
+of his eyes dilated and contracted strangely.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Strips of magnesium were laid like bridging planks across
+chunks of lava, and in the dust all around were countless
+curious scrabbled marks.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p061">p.&nbsp;61</a></span>
+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&mdash;as if a vast mistake had been made.</p>
+
+<p>"It is necessary for you to be informed about <i>some</i> 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&mdash;as surely as if impressed in granite&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>Rodan pulled a shiny object from his thigh pouch, and held
+it out in a gloved palm for his new employees to peer at.</p>
+
+<p>"One of the things we found," he remarked. "Incomplete.
+If we could, for instance, locate the other parts..."</p>
+
+<p>Frank saw a little cylinder, with grey coils wrapped inside
+it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;garden
+and living quarters, with a workshop and supply dome between
+them..."</p>
+
+<p>Quarters proved to be okay&mdash;two bunks and the usual compact
+accessories.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave your Archers in the lockers outside your door&mdash;here
+are your keys," Rodan suggested. "Helen will have a meal
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p062">p.&nbsp;62</a></span>
+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..."</p>
+
+<p>It was a good meal&mdash;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&mdash;all had become common staples in hydroponic gardens
+off the Earth.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you make of what Rodan was talking about, Les?"
+Frank asked conversationally.</p>
+
+<p>But David Lester was lost and vague, his food almost untouched.
+"I&mdash;I don't know!" he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>Scared and embittered further by this bad sign, Frank turned
+to Helen. "And how are you?" he asked hopefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I am all right," she answered, without a trace of encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Now Frank tried to delay Lester's inevitable complete crackup
+by encouraging his interest in their <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'situlation' in the original text.">situation</ins>.</p>
+
+<p>"It's big, Les," he said. "It's got to be! An expedition came
+here to investigate the Moon&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;that
+I ever heard of&mdash;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&mdash;he's
+got something that'll make him famous!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I think I'll have a devil-killer and hit the sack,
+Frank," Lester said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;all right," Frank agreed wearily. "Me, likewise."</p>
+
+<p>Frank awoke naturally from a dreamless slumber. After a
+breakfast of eggs that had been a powder, Lester and he were
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p063">p.&nbsp;63</a></span>
+at the diggings, sifting dust for the dropped and discarded
+items of an alien visitation.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;say&mdash;a toothbrush
+or a bobbypin?</p>
+
+<p>The metal cylinders, neatly cut open, might have contained
+food&mdash;dried leaf-like dregs still remained inside. There were
+small bottles made of pearly glass, too&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>After ten Earth-days, in the lunar afternoon, Frank found
+the grave. He shouted as his brushing hands uncovered a
+glassy, flexible surface.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the punctured covering, the corpse was dry, of course&mdash;stomach,
+brain sac, rough, pitted skin, terminal tendrils&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Martian!" Lester gasped. "At least we know that they were
+like this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Rodan agreed softly. "<i>I'll</i> look after <i>this</i> find."</p>
+
+<p>Moving very carefully, even in the weak lunar gravity, he
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p064">p.&nbsp;64</a></span>
+picked up the product of another evolution and bore it away
+to the shop dome.</p>
+
+<p>Frank was furious. This was his discovery, and he was not
+even allowed to examine it.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;yellow in the black sky&mdash;and its vicinity,
+produced no result.</p>
+
+<p>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...!</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But now, at the sunrise&mdash;S.O.B., was it possible that they
+had been here almost a month?&mdash;Frank at the diggings,
+indulged in some muttering, himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you all right, Frank?" Lester asked mildly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p065">p.&nbsp;65</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Not altogether!" Frank Nelsen snapped dryly. "How about
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;with
+perhaps a touch of schizophrenia&mdash;might do better off
+the Earth than the more usual types."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Good for you, Les," Nelsen enthused, relieved. "Only&mdash;well,
+skip it, for now."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p066">p.&nbsp;66</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was just a thought, sir," he said, being as placating as he
+dared, and controlling his rising fury.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen decided to work quietly, as before, for a while...
+There were a few more significant finds&mdash;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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank tried a new approach on Helen, who really was
+Rodan's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like poetry, Helen? I used to memorize Keats,
+Frost, Shakespeare."</p>
+
+<p>They were there in the dining room. She brightened a little.
+"I remember&mdash;some."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember clouds, the sound of water? Trees,
+grass...?"</p>
+
+<p>She actually smiled, wistfully. "Yes. Sunday afternoons. A
+blue dress. My mother when she was alive... A dog I had,
+once..."</p>
+
+<p>Helen Rodan wasn't quite a zombie, after all. Maybe he
+could win her confidence, if he went slow...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p067">p.&nbsp;67</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She was trembling. "Dad will handle this," she said.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Much obliged," Frank said dryly.</p>
+
+<p>After that, everything happened to build his tensions to the
+breaking point.</p>
+
+<p>At a work period's end, near the lunar noon, he heard a
+voice in his helmet-phone. "Frank&mdash;this is Two-and-Two...!
+Why don't you ever call or answer...?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;it's me&mdash;Frank Nelsen...!"</p>
+
+<p>Venus was in the sky, not too close to the sun. But still,
+though Nelsen called repeatedly, there was no reply.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Rodan made sure," Frank gruffed. "That S.O.B. put us on a
+real short tether!"</p>
+
+<p>David Lester looked frightened for a minute. Then he
+seemed to ease.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah?" Frank breathed.</p>
+
+<p>There was the big question. Nelsen figured that an old, corny
+pattern stuck out all over Rodan. Personal glory emphasized
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p068">p.&nbsp;68</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Frank Nelsen&mdash;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...?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>Far Side</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Serene...</p>
+
+<p>Found a queen...</p>
+
+<p>And her name is Eileen..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>she</i> gotten <i>that</i> far, so fast?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the possibility became a symbol of what the others
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p069">p.&nbsp;69</a></span>
+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!</p>
+
+<p>So here was another force of Frank Nelsen's desperation.</p>
+
+<p>He made up his mind&mdash;which perhaps just then was a bit
+mad.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Serene.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;these two introverts
+had somehow discovered each other, and were getting along
+well together&mdash;were visible through the transparent wall,
+lingering at the diggings.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Now!&mdash;he told himself. Or would it be better to wait fourteen
+more Earth-days, till another lunar dawn? Hell no&mdash;that
+would be chickenish procrastination. Rodan and Dutch were a
+good ten feet away from him&mdash;he was out of their reach.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>They were down&mdash;safe from death, since they had managed
+to re-<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'leatch' in the original text.">latch</ins> their collars. But with a cold fury that had
+learned to take no chances with defeat, Nelsen proceeded to
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p070">p.&nbsp;70</a></span>
+kick them again, first one and then the other, meaning to
+make them insensible.</p>
+
+<p>He got Dutch's pistol. He was a shade slow with Rodan.
+"You won't get anything that is mine!" he heard Rodan grunt.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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, <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'in' in the original text.">an</ins> 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&mdash;all for the most part
+hopelessly shattered&mdash;were hurled far and wide, along with
+the relics from Mars. The adjacent garden and quarters domes
+were also shredded and swept away.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;yes, petunias&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw you do it&mdash;you&mdash;murderer!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Frank&mdash;I didn't suppose&mdash;" Lester stammered. "Now&mdash;what
+are we going to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"All that we can do&mdash;try to get out of here!" Frank snapped
+back at him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold her, Les," he ordered. "Maybe I overplayed my hand,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p071">p.&nbsp;71</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen trussed Rodan up, too, then searched Rodan's thigh
+pouch and found a bunch of keys.</p>
+
+<p>"You come along with me, Les and Helen," he said. "First
+we'll find out what we've got left to work with."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen swung Helen around to face him, and unlatched a
+port at her Archer's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Helen seemed about to attack him. But then her look wavered;
+confusion and pain came into her face.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen was aware that he was doing almost all of the talking,
+but maybe this had to be.</p>
+
+"So we've got a long walk," he said. "Toward the Tovie
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p072">p.&nbsp;72</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Both Rodan and Dutch had come to. Rodan said nothing.
+His look was pure poison.</p>
+
+<p>Dutch sneered. "Smart damn kid you are, huh, Nelsen?
+<i>You think!</i> Wait till you and your mumblin' crackpot pal get
+out there! I'll watch both of you go bust, squirt!"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;no energy-source&mdash;to release
+it and save us..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;straight toward the constellation <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'Casseopia' in the original text.">Cassiopeia</ins>,
+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 <i>might</i>
+appear?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn, loony squirt's crackin' up!" Dutch screamed suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow, Lester remained cool. It was as if, with everyone
+else scared, too, and nobody to show superior courage, he
+had found himself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p073">p.&nbsp;73</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The batteries waned further. The cold of the inky lunar
+night&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or gimmick&mdash;that
+they found. After a while, Lester made the rounds, while
+Nelsen rested.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;his coffin would be a common one&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>He tried to clip the nuclear battery back in Helen's armor,
+again. She <i>might</i> 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...</p>
+
+<p>"If this goddam dust</p>
+
+<p>Just holds its crust,</p>
+
+<p>I'll get on to hell</p>
+
+<p>If my gear don't bust..."</p>
+
+<p>"Hey!" Nelsen gurgled thickly into his phone. "Hey..."
+Then it was as if he sort of sank...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or was it somebody he'd met before?</p>
+
+<p>Maybe he asked, because he got an answer&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure Frankie&mdash;me, Gimp Hines, the itinerant trader and
+repairman of the lunar wilderness... What a <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'sitch' in the original text.">switch</ins>&mdash;didn't
+think <i>you'd</i> goof! The Bunch&mdash;especially Two-and-Two&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p074">p.&nbsp;74</a></span>
+that ornery professor-or-whatever, are right here, too&mdash;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&mdash;a hundred bucks just to shoot a
+fifth into orbit."</p>
+
+<p>Frank gulped and coughed. "Thanks, Gimp." His voice
+was like pumice.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up, I said!" Gimp ordered arrogantly. "About me&mdash;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&mdash;and for what prices&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>Then he was telling the whole story.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;got to head back to Serene...
+You were trying for the Tovie station, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else could we do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see what you mean, Frank. If you could have made it,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p075">p.&nbsp;75</a></span>
+and missed getting shot by some trigger-happy guard&mdash;where
+a frontier isn't even supposed to exist&mdash;they probably would
+have held you for a while, and then let you go."</p>
+
+<p>"About the rest of the Bunch?" Frank Nelsen prompted.</p>
+
+<p>"The Kuzaks got to the Belt okay&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ramos?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Eileen, the Queen of Serene? Gimp!&mdash;is <i>that</i> so, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yep&mdash;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&mdash;yet&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Just let's watch Rodan&mdash;that's all," Frank Nelsen warned.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure&mdash;we'll keep him good and <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'dopy' in the original text.">dopey</ins> with a tranquilizer..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p076">p.&nbsp;76</a></span>
+eagerly and worriedly along the trail, that wound past fantastic
+scenery.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen was eager and tense, himself. Serene, he was thinking
+with gratitude. Back to some of civilization. Back to freedom&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"There have been some difficulties," he said. "I think you
+will want all of our names."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"A moment," gruffed one of the guards with a slight accent.
+"We shall say who shall do what&mdash;passing this lock. Difficulties?
+Very well. Names, and space-fitness cards, please, from
+everybody. And where you will be staying, here in Serene..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back to his first action against Rodan&mdash;with a
+sharpened trowel that had pierced the wall of a stellene dome&mdash;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&mdash;or
+Moonmad. Yet he didn't hate Xavier Rodan any less.</p>
+
+<p>"The S.O.B. might just get sent to a mental hospital&mdash;at the
+worst," Gimp growled loyally. "Well, come on, Frank&mdash;let's
+forget it, ditch our Archies at the Hostel, get a culture steak,
+and look around to see what you've missed..."</p>
+
+<p>So that was how Frank Nelsen began to get acquainted
+with Serene&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p077">p.&nbsp;77</a></span>
+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?</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>The First Stop</i>, was nestled cosily
+in the lava-rock underlying the dust of Mare Serenitatis.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;all girls&mdash;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&mdash;or even many of
+the others&mdash;had come to see.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;just you&mdash;like
+a spirit of luck and love, far out in the thick silence.</p>
+
+<p>Her caper ended. She was puffing and laughing and bowing&mdash;and
+maybe sweating, some, besides. The clapping was
+<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'thundrous' in the original text.">thunderous</ins>. She came out again and sang <i>Fire Streak</i> in a
+haunting, husky voice.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, a barman touched Frank's and Gimp's shoulders.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p078">p.&nbsp;78</a></span>
+"Hines and Nelsen? She has spotted you two. She wants
+to see you in her quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, lads," she laughed. "Beer for old times?... You look
+like hell, Frank. Brief me on the missing chapter. You had
+everybody scared."</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-uh&mdash;you first, Your Majesty," Nelsen chuckled in return.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;bigger
+and better. Or get back to my own regular self, working
+Out There with the men."</p>
+
+<p>Maybe it was bad taste, but Nelsen felt like teasing. "Ever
+hear of a person named Miguel Ramos?<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: quotation mark missing in the original text.">"</ins></p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>He told her the story, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>At last she said, "Frank, you must be spiritually all jammed
+up. Gimp is set, I know..."</p>
+
+<p>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 <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'dissappeared' in the original text.">disappeared</ins> discreetly with his date. Frank and
+Jennie sat <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'a' in the original text.">at</ins> a table in a private booth, high up in the arches
+of <i>The First Stop</i>, and watched Eileen do another number.</p>
+
+<p>Jennie explained herself. "I'm another one. I've got to go
+where the heroes go. That's me&mdash;Frankie, is it? So I'm
+here..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't need Eileen to tell me you're a good guy, Frank,"
+she said with a small, warm smile. "<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'Were' in the original text.">We're</ins> just entertainers.
+They wouldn't let us be anything else&mdash;here..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p079">p.&nbsp;79</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nelsen had bitter, vengeful thoughts of Rodan being set
+at liberty&mdash;with himself the culprit.</p>
+
+<p>The official at the police building was an American&mdash;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&mdash;another employee&mdash;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&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>Frank felt a humbled wonder. Was Rodan really accountable,
+or was it the Moon and space, working on people's
+emotions?</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the building, Frank and Gimp found Dave Lester
+and Helen Rodan entering. They talked for a moment. Then
+Lester said:</p>
+
+<p>"Helen's had lots of trouble. And we're in love. What do we
+do, guys?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dunno&mdash;get married?" Nelsen answered, shrugging. "It
+must happen here, too. Oh, I get it&mdash;living costs, off the
+Earth, are high. Well&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Shucks, I can do better," Gimp joined in. "Pay us sometime,
+when you see us."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't know..." Lester protested worriedly, like an
+honest man.</p>
+
+<p>But Gimp and Frank were already shelling out bills, like
+vagabonds who happened to be flush.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't," Nelsen answered. "You sure you don't want
+to look at Rodan's site&mdash;see if we can find any more Martian
+stuff?"</p>
+
+<p>Gimp looked regretful for a second. "Uh-uh&mdash;it's jinxed,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p080">p.&nbsp;80</a></span>
+the shop. Most of it was already fixed. Ramos had been helping.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Frankie&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are," Nelsen told him.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh&mdash;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&mdash;North America is turned
+away... I couldn't pinpoint the Kuzaks in the Belt, but
+that's not unusual."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Should," Ramos agreed. "Weapons&mdash;we might need 'em
+this trip&mdash;and everything else is about ready."</p>
+
+<p>"So we'll get a good meal, and then buy our load," Frank
+enthused.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Blastoff from Serene's port, even with three heavily loaded
+trader rockets, was comparatively easy and inexpensive.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Before the rockets began to descend, the trio of beautiful,
+fragile rings, pushed by ions streaming from their centers,
+started to accelerate.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">V</h2>
+
+
+<p>"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&mdash;after the delivery of their
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p081">p.&nbsp;81</a></span>
+loads of supplies to the Kuzaks&mdash;tentatively marked in their
+minds as Pallastown on Pallas, the Golden Asteroid.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:</p>
+
+<p>"... 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&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But when, after a moment, Paul Hendricks answered from
+the distance, "Easy with the talk, fella&mdash;overinterested people
+might be listening," they suddenly forgot their own enthusiasms.
+They realized. Their hides tingled unpleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>A little later, Frank Nelsen contacted Art <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'Kuzack' in the original text.">Kuzak</ins>, 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&mdash;for you guys..." But after the twenty minute interval
+it took to get an answer back over ten light-minutes of distance
+traversed twice&mdash;186,000 miles for every second, spanned by
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p082">p.&nbsp;82</a></span>
+slender threads of radio energy which were of low-power but
+of low-loss low-dispersal, too, explaining their tremendous
+range&mdash;Art Kuzak's warning was carefully cryptic, yet plain
+to Nelsen and his companions.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks for all the favors," he growled dryly. "Now keep
+still, and be <i>real</i> thoughtful, Frankie Boy. That also goes for
+you other two naive boneheads..."</p>
+
+<p>Open space, like open, scarcely touched country, had produced
+its outlaws. But the distances were far greater. The
+pressures of need were infinitely harsher.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;widely
+separated asteroid-miners talking to each other, for the most
+part&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p083">p.&nbsp;83</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Ramos said just about what he had said&mdash;long ago, it
+seemed, now. "Nuts&mdash;the Big Vacuum ain't so tough." But he
+amended quickly, "Yeah, I know, Frank&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;other than
+the magnificent view of the Red Planet, below.</p>
+
+<p>Gimp Hines' freckled face shone in the ruddy light. "<i>I'm</i>
+going down," he declared. "Just for a few days, to look
+around near the Survey Station. You guys?"</p>
+
+<p>Ramos shrugged, almost disinterested. "People have been
+there&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p084">p.&nbsp;84</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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, <i>different</i> civilization, that had
+risen at last in anger, using its own methods of allergy, terrible
+repellant nostalgia, and mental distortions?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;we don't know where to reach him..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p085">p.&nbsp;85</a></span>
+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 <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'stear' in the original text.">steer</ins> 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Eldorado," he said once, cockily, as if he remembered
+something from the Spanish part of his background.</p>
+
+<p>They got almost three-quarters across that unimaginable
+stretch of emptiness before there was a bad sign. It was a
+catcall&mdash;literally&mdash;in their helmet phones. "Meow!" It was
+falsely plaintive and innocuous. It was a maliciously childish
+promise of trouble.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, there was a chuckle. "Be cavalier, fellas.
+Watch yourselves. I mean it." The tone had a strange intensity.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos stiffened. With his phone power turned very low, he
+said, "Frank&mdash;lots of people say 'Be cavalier', nowadays. But
+that includes one of the old Bunch. The voice <i>might</i> match,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh&mdash;Tiflin, the S.O.B.," Nelsen growled softly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Fist-sized chunks flicked through their vehicles almost simultaneously.
+Air puffed out. Their rings collapsed under
+them&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>As his awareness faded, Nelsen fired rapidly, and saw
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p086">p.&nbsp;86</a></span>
+Ramos doing the same&mdash;until his hand slapped suddenly at
+his side...</p>
+
+<p>After that there was nothing, until, for a few seconds, Frank
+Nelsen regained a blurred consciousness. He was lying, unarmored,
+inside a bubb&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Busht out shummore!" somebody was hollering. "We got
+jackpot&mdash;the whole fanshy works! I almost think I'm back in
+Sputtsberg&mdash;wherever hell that is... But where's the wimmin?
+Nothing but dumb, prissy pitchers! Not even <i>good</i> pitchers...!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey!" the pimply guy gurgled. "Hey&mdash;Boss! Our benefactors&mdash;they're
+half awake! You should shleep, baby greenhorns...!"</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;boots over head. There was a bad smell of
+old sweat, and worse.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Etched into the scratched plastic of the helmet that covered
+his head, he saw "Archer III&mdash;ser. no. 828211." And casually
+stuck into the gasketted rim of the collar, was a note, pencilled
+jaggedly on a scrap of paper:</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p087">p.&nbsp;87</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you get a letter, too, Frank?" Ramos asked. For close
+communication, the old helmet-phones still worked okay.</p>
+
+<p>"I did," Nelsen breathed. "Why didn't they just knock us
+off? Alive, we might tell on them."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen figured that all this was probably the truth. In the
+Belt, life was cheap. Death got to be a joke.</p>
+
+<p>"There was an ox of a guy with big teeth!" he hissed furiously.
+"Thought I saw Tiflin, too&mdash;the S.O.B.! Cripes, do I
+always land in the soup?"</p>
+
+<p>"The bossman with the teeth, I remember," Ramos grated.
+"Tiflin I don't know about. Could be... Hell, though&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll check everything&mdash;see how bad off they left us,"
+Nelsen said.</p>
+
+<p>So that was what they did, after they had set their decrepit
+shoulder-ionics to slow them down in the direction of the Belt.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;these last
+items obviously granted them from their own, now vanished
+stores. Here was weird generosity&mdash;or perhaps just more ghoulish
+fun to give them the feeble hope of survival.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p088">p.&nbsp;88</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;by
+luck&mdash;not as bad as some of the other vital parts.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Guess we'll have to become asteroid-hoppers&mdash;miners&mdash;like
+the slob said," Nelsen growled. "Well&mdash;I <i>did</i> want to try
+everything..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>And the brightened speck of Pallas was too far to one side.
+Tovie Ceres was too near on the other side&mdash;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&mdash;about
+twelve miles per second&mdash;of the Belt. Otherwise, small pieces
+of the old planet, hurtling in another direction&mdash;and/or at a
+different velocity&mdash;than themselves, could smash them.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe they thought that they would be located and picked
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p089">p.&nbsp;89</a></span>
+up&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>They saw their first asteroid&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>They got a few scraps of the stuff to put into the nets which
+they were towing.</p>
+
+<p>"For luck," Ramos laughed. "Without it we'll never pay
+J. John."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up. Big deal," Nelsen snapped.</p>
+
+<p>"Okay. Shut up it is!" Ramos answered him.</p>
+
+<p>So they stayed silent until they couldn't stand that, either.
+Everything was getting on their nerves.</p>
+
+<p>Their next asteroids were mere chips a foot long&mdash;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:</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>The uranium was driving their radiation-counters wild.</p>
+
+<p>"Could we drag it, if there was more?" Ramos growled.
+"With just sun-power on these lousy shoulder-ionics?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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 <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'Kuzaks' in the original text.">Kuzaks'</ins> supply post
+was, and the dizzying distance to Pallas, with only half-functioning
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p090">p.&nbsp;90</a></span>
+ionics to get them there, fuddled them in their inexperience.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+good thing, because one month went, and then two, as
+near as they could figure. Cripes, how much longer could they
+last?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;rattling
+the saber.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen and Ramos listened avidly because it was life, because
+it was contact with lost things, because it was not dead
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>Their own tribulations deepened.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"The stuff is crawling up my legs," Nelsen growled.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"This is where I came in," Nelsen said bitterly. "Damn
+these beam systems that are so delicate and important!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p091">p.&nbsp;91</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Once they heard wild laughter, and what could have been
+a woman's scream. But it could have been other things, too.</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen and Ramos were fortunate. Twenty miles off was a
+haze against the stars&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;blonde, dark,
+red-headed&mdash;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...</p>
+
+<p>Later&mdash;much later&mdash;he heard young, green asteroid-hoppers
+yakking happily about girls and about how magnificent it was,
+out here.</p>
+
+<p>"Haw-haw," he heard Ramos mock.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah," Nelsen said thickly. "Lucky for them that they
+aren't near us&mdash;being careless with their beams, that way..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Ramos and he seemed to go on for an indefinite period
+longer. In a sense, they toughened. But toward the last they
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p092">p.&nbsp;92</a></span>
+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&mdash;it was a by-product of the photosynthetic
+process&mdash;might even have sustained them for a considerable
+interval.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;derived through worn-out thermocouple units&mdash;to
+feed their uncertain ionics, they could change course only
+very slowly, now.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Poof had gone the blue sky and this whole world, all in a
+moment, the scattered pieces forming the <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'asteriods' in the original text.">asteroids</ins>. Accident?
+More likely it was a huge, interplanetary missile from competing
+Mars. The Martians had died, too&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen had glimpsed ancient Mars, preserved on the
+Moon. Now he glimpsed its opponent culture, about which
+more was generally known.</p>
+
+<p>"It's real," Ramos grunted. "Hoppers find surface-fragments
+like this, quite often."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen hardly cared about the archeological aspects just
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p093">p.&nbsp;93</a></span>
+then. Excitement and hope that became certainty, enlivened
+his dulled brain.</p>
+
+<p>"An energy source," he grated joyfully. "The Big Answer to
+Everything, out here! And it's always self-contained in their
+buildings..."</p>
+
+<p>They pushed the collapsed and blackened thing with the
+slender bones, aside. They crept into the flat, horizontal spaces
+of the dwelling&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"DC current, huh?" Ramos said, breathing hard of the rotten
+air in his helmet.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"We can tap off lower, if we have to... Here&mdash;I'll fix you,
+first... Grab this end..."</p>
+
+<p>They had a sweating two hours of rewiring to get done.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We can make it&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p094">p.&nbsp;94</a></span>
+parallel to it, backwards&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, Nelsen... Oh, Mex... Wait up... I've been
+looking for you for over three months..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"There's just two of them&mdash;so far," Ramos hissed. "Maybe
+here's our chance, Frank, to really smear that rat!" Ramos'
+eyes had a battlelight. "All right, Tiflin&mdash;approach. These guns
+are lined up and loaded."</p>
+
+<p>"Aw&mdash;is <i>that</i> friendship, Mex?" the renegade seemed to
+wheedle. But insolently, he and his larger companion came on.</p>
+
+<p>"Toss us your pistols," Ramos commanded, as they drifted
+close, checking speed.</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were
+missing. "Honest, Mex&mdash;do you expect us to do that? Be
+cavalier&mdash;I haven't even got a pistol, right now. Neither has
+Igor, here. Come look-see... Hi, Frankie!"</p>
+
+<p>"Just stay there," Nelsen gruffed.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;and poisonous&mdash;mental
+judo?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Honest&mdash;I just picked up Igor&mdash;which ain't his real name&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p095">p.&nbsp;95</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;round and round the
+sun, for millions of years. Longest knife throw there ever was."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Knew</i>&mdash;for a while&mdash;past tense," Tiflin chuckled wickedly.
+"Nope&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>you</i> were around, Tiflin!"</p>
+
+<p>"Maybe not. Maybe I was twenty million miles off."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen didn't know till now, after exerting himself,
+how weak privations had made him. He felt dizzy.</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin's eyes had glazed slightly, as he and Frank did a slow
+roll, together. He gasped. But that insulting smirk came back.</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't had your Wheaties lately, have you, Frank? Go
+ahead&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Here, hold these guns, Frank. Lemme have a couple of
+pokes at the slob," Ramos snapped.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p096">p.&nbsp;96</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Aw-right, aw-right&mdash;who's asking you guys to believe me?"
+Tiflin cut in. "I'll beam the twins for you&mdash;since I'd guess
+your transmitter won't reach. You can listen in, and talk back
+through my set. Okay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Let's see what happens&mdash;just for kicks," Ramos said softly.
+"If you're calling some friends to come and get us, or anything,
+Tif&mdash;well, you've had it!"</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, Art and Joe&mdash;it's us," Ramos almost apologized.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah&mdash;we don't quite know yet what Tiflin is pulling. But
+here we are&mdash;if it's you we're talking to..."</p>
+
+<p>There was the usual long wait as impulses bridged the light-minutes.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>We'll</i> escort <i>you</i>," Ramos said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;if he ever did
+them dirt."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Art," Tiflin laughed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p097">p.&nbsp;97</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;miraculous
+luxury&mdash;played over them. They rubbed disinfectant
+salves into their fungus-ridden hides.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a clean, white table, with plates, knives,
+forks. They had to treat their shrunken stomachs gently&mdash;just
+a little of everything&mdash;beer, steak, vegetables, fruit... Somewhere
+during the past, unmarked days Frank Nelsen had gotten
+to be twenty years old. Only twenty? Well&mdash;maybe this
+was his celebration.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Art Kuzak blew air up past his pug nose, and continued.
+"Finance&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Art grinned wryly at Nelsen and Ramos. His hint was plain.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p098">p.&nbsp;98</a></span>
+He had seen the museum pieces that they had brought in.</p>
+
+<p>"Should we, Frank?" Ramos chuckled after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly... We've got some collateral, Art. Lots more
+valuable per unit mass than any raw metal, I should think."</p>
+
+<p>"So you might want to work for us?" Art inquired blandly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not 'for'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'."</p>
+
+<p>"Okay, Cuties," Art laughed.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Kuzak had just come back into the dwelling and office
+bubb.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ten hours sleep and breakfast," Frank said. "Then a little
+camouflage material, new weapons, a pair of Archers in condition&mdash;got
+any left?"</p>
+
+<p>"Five in stock," Joe answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Settled, then?" Art asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, it is," Ramos answered, and Nelsen nodded.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Huddled up to resemble stray fragments, they curved out of
+the Belt&mdash;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 <i>might</i> have been stray meteors from deep in
+space.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Even without the memory that Tiflin might make guesses
+about what they meant to do, Nelsen and Ramos would have
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p099">p.&nbsp;99</a></span>
+taken no chances. They had to be brutal. Homing darts pierced
+armor. The four went to sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen's wonder was hurried and dulled.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p100">p.&nbsp;100</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Greetings were curiously breathless yet casual, but without
+any backslapping.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Hi-hi&mdash;good to see you guys," Ramos said.</p>
+
+<p>"Likewise. Hello, Les," Frank put in.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or being latched onto by&mdash;somebody whom
+you feel will get himself and you ahead, and make you both
+a buck?"</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some&mdash;on the way. Not very much," Ramos said. "There's
+a camera."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think, Les?" Gimp asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, dammit&mdash;let's see what the thing can show!" Ramos
+gruffed.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkened room, the device threw a rectangle of light
+on the wall. Then there was shape, motion, and color, kept
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p101">p.&nbsp;101</a></span>
+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&mdash;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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen's mouth often hung open with fascination.
+But his own realities kept intruding. They prodded him.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>Hines terminated the pictured sequence. "Frank&mdash;Ramos&mdash;I'd
+keep this camera," he said urgently. "It's a little bit special,
+at least. History is here, to be investigated. Offers&mdash;bids&mdash;could
+come up. Okay&mdash;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&mdash;the hock-shop approach&mdash;is no good...
+Am I telling it right, Les?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Right now, then," Frank said.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, you impolite slobs!" Ramos laughed. "When do you
+consult me, co-discoverer and -owner? Awright, skip it&mdash;you're
+the Wizards of Oz. I'll just grab out a few items for my
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p102">p.&nbsp;102</a></span>
+Ma and the kids, and maybe a girl or two I'll meet someplace.
+You guys might as well do the same."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir," Nelsen responded.</p>
+
+<p>Gimp Hines had the better part of the supplies to be purchased
+already lined up at the warehouses.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen counted the money he had left. "Figuring losses and
+gains, I have no idea how much I owe J. John&mdash;if anything,"
+he laughed. "So I'll make it a grand&mdash;build up my ego...
+But we owe old Paul more than dough."</p>
+
+<p>"All right, I'm another idiot&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;I'm getting mixed up again..."</p>
+
+<p>Dave Lester had wandered off embarrassedly, there in the
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p103">p.&nbsp;103</a></span>
+warehouse. But now he returned, clearing his throat for attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Fellas," he said. "Helen and I want you to come out to
+our apartment, now, for dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"Shucks, that's swell, Les," Ramos responded, suddenly
+curious.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, also," Nelsen enthused.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," Gimp said. But his smile thinned.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Much of what followed was painful and familiar&mdash;in a fantastic
+setting. Two young people, recently married, struggling
+with problems that they hadn't been able to plan for very well.</p>
+
+<p>While his wife was out of earshot, Lester put his hand on
+the back of a chair constructed entirely of fine golden wire&mdash;later
+it developed that he had made it, do-it-yourself fashion,
+to be economical&mdash;and seemed more intent on holding it
+down than to rest his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;my father-in-law, died by his
+own hand while still awaiting trial... Everything he owned
+is still tied up... Now, well&mdash;you know human biology...
+I hope you can wait a little longer for us to begin paying back
+your loan..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a topic for an evening of fun," Gimp complained.
+"Hey, Helen&mdash;can I mix the drinks?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"On the Moon you were a swell cook, Helen," Frank reminded
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She flashed a small smile. "It was different, there. Things
+weighed something, and stayed in place. Here&mdash;just breathe
+hard and you have a kitchen accident. Besides, I had a garden.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p104">p.&nbsp;104</a></span>
+We'd like one here, but there's no room... And in the
+market...<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: quotation mark missing in the original text.">"</ins></p>
+
+<p>"Shucks&mdash;it's new here to us, too," Ramos soothed. "Riding
+an Archer in space, at zero-G, is different from this..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;but with another price-level.</p>
+
+<p>The visitors made a game of being awkward and inept, together.
+It was balm for Helen's sensitivity.</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody's got to keep the camera for us, Mex," Frank
+Nelsen said presently.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah&mdash;I know. Les'll do it for us," Ramos answered. "He's
+the best, there. He can run through all the pictures&mdash;make
+copies with an ordinary camera... See if he can market
+them. Twenty percent ought to be about right for his cut."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>Hines grinned. "Probably. Glad you slobs got memories.
+Glad to be of assistance, anytime. Les is no louse&mdash;he'll help
+old friends. I'll bring him the camera, out of the safe at my
+hotel, as soon as we leave here..."</p>
+
+<p>Lester smiled doubtfully, and then happily. That was how
+they worked the fabulous generosity of spacemen in the chips
+on him.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen, Ramos and Hines escaped soon after that.</p>
+
+<p>"Three hours left. I guess you guys want to get lost&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen wandered alone in the recreation area. He
+heard music&mdash;<i>Fire Streak</i>, <i>Queen of Serene</i>... 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'summersaults' in the original text.">somersaults</ins> in mid-air. He thought he ought
+to find himself a friend&mdash;then decided perversely, to hell with
+it.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the trouble on Earth, of Ceres, of Tiflin and
+Igor, of Fanshaw, the latest leader of the Asteroid Belt toughs&mdash;the
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p105">p.&nbsp;105</a></span>
+Jolly Lads&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Before he wrapped and addressed the package, he put a note
+inside:</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, Nance Codiss! Thinking about you and all the neighbors.
+This might reach you by Christmas. Remember me?
+Frank Nelsen."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>On leaving the post office, he promptly forgot the whole
+matter, as hard, practical concerns took hold of him, again.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>All through the long journey&mdash;beam calls ahead were
+avoided for added safety&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p106">p.&nbsp;106</a></span>
+was brought through. Business with the asteroid-hoppers
+was started at once.</p>
+
+<p>When there was a lull, Art Kuzak talked expansively in his
+office bubb:</p>
+
+<p>"Good work, Frank. Same to you, Ramos&mdash;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&mdash;everything. Time, work, and a
+little luck will do it. You listening, Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen got a bit cagy with Art, again. "Okay, Art&mdash;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&mdash;<i>K</i>uzak, <i>R</i>amos, <i>N</i>elsen and
+<i>H</i>ines. The 'H' could also stand for Hendricks&mdash;Paul Hendricks."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>like</i> it that way, you suspicious slob," Art Kuzak chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>One thing that Nelsen was, was conscientious. He could
+choose and stick to a purpose for even longer than it seemed
+right for him.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>At first, KRNH just handled the usual supplies. But when
+factory and hydroponic equipment began to arrive, Joe Kuzak
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p107">p.&nbsp;107</a></span>
+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. <i>Oh, no</i>, you thought.
+Then&mdash;<i>well, maybe</i>. 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.</p>
+
+<p>Now and then Nelsen was in Pallastown&mdash;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, <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'heathy' in the original text.">healthy</ins>, and male. Cripes&mdash;Out Here, too? Okay&mdash;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 <i>different</i>. The earnings didn't
+change Nelsen's life much, nor Gimp's, nor Ramos'. But it
+sure helped the Lesters.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"... Paul Hendricks is still the same, Frank. New bunch
+around him... Too bad we can't call him, now&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>After a minute, Nelsen relaxed, slightly. "Two-and-Two?
+I guess he's okay&mdash;with Charlie Reynolds looking after him?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p108">p.&nbsp;108</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nelsen sat up very straight. "Never mind," he said. "Just
+tell me more. Anything can happen."</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>Fire Streak</i> on the bagpipes&mdash;inside a sealed
+tent&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Two-and-Two's back in Jarviston, then?" Nelsen demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not anymore&mdash;just gimme breath," Hines went on.
+"He and Charlie had figured another destination of opportunity&mdash;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&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p109">p.&nbsp;109</a></span>
+he's probably almost there. And even under the most favorable
+conditions, Mercury is hard to beam&mdash;too much solar
+magnetic interference."</p>
+
+<p>"That poor sap," Nelsen gruffed.</p>
+
+<p>"It probably isn't that bad, anymore," Hines commented.
+"Sometime I might go to Mercury, myself&mdash;when I get good
+and sick of sitting on my tail, here&mdash;when I always was a man
+of action! Mercury does have possibilities&mdash;plenty of solar
+power, certainly; plenty of frozen atmosphere on the dark face.
+Interesting, Frank... Oh, hell, I forgot&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>Gimp Hines grinned as he left.</p>
+
+<p>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, <i>Cripes&mdash;that poor kid&mdash;what
+did I start?</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hello, Frank&mdash;it has to be that, doesn't it, and not Mr.
+Nelsen, since you've sent me this miraculous bracelet&mdash;which
+I don't dare wear very much, since I don't want to lose an arm
+to some international&mdash;or even interstellar&mdash;jewel thief! It
+makes me feel like the Queen of Something&mdash;certainly not
+Serene, since it implies calmness and repose, which I certainly
+don't feel&mdash;no offense to our Miss Sands, whom I admire
+enormously. In a very small way I am repaying to you in kind&mdash;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&mdash;I couldn't stand it&mdash;but please do write. Tell me how
+it really is in the Belt. You simply don't realize how much&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;creylon
+wool, very warm, bright red, a bit crude in workmanship here
+and there&mdash;but imagine a girl bothering, these days! He donned
+the garment and decided it fit fine.</p>
+
+<p>Then he tried to write a letter:</p>
+
+<p>"Hi, Nance! I've just put it on&mdash;first time&mdash;beautiful! It'll
+stay right with me. Thanks. Talk about being staggered..."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p110">p.&nbsp;110</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;well, skip it... I'm going into
+Town to prepare. It'll take quite a while, so I'll have some fun,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>Ramos' eyes twinkled with a secret triumph&mdash;before the
+fact.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't argue a fighting rooster out of fighting," Nelsen
+laughed. "Besides, it wouldn't be Destiny&mdash;or any fun&mdash;to
+succeed. So accept the complimentary comparison&mdash;if it fits&mdash;which
+maybe it doesn't, you egotistical bonehead. Good
+luck&mdash;<i>buena suerte, amigo</i>. I'll look you up in Town, if I get
+a chance..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there were always the Jolly Lads to watch out for&mdash;the
+extreme individualists, space-twisted and wild. Robbing
+and murdering could seem easier than digging. Take your loot
+into Pallastown&mdash;who knew you hadn't grubbed it, yourself?
+Sell it. Get the stink blown off you&mdash;forget some terrible
+things that had happened to you. Have yourself a time. Strike
+Out again. Repeat...</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen knew that, through the months, he had killed defensively
+at least twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet&mdash;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.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p111">p.&nbsp;111</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>He wrote a letter to Nance Codiss, answering one of hers&mdash;funny,
+he'd never yet tried to contact her vocally. Being busy,
+being cautious about using a beam&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Nance: You seem to be making fine headway in your
+new courses. All the good words, for that..."</p>
+
+<p>There were plenty of good words, but he didn't put many
+of them down. He didn't know if the impulse to write <i>Darling</i>,
+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&mdash;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&mdash;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?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that they came
+easy, out here. He microposted the letter, and mailed a square
+of soft glass-silk of many colors.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>he</i> managed to survive so long? His
+mere presence, here, seemed like a signal of the end of peace.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p112">p.&nbsp;112</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;there were too many uncertainties
+about the setup in wild, polyglot Pallastown. Nelsen
+moved on to the rec area.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't go into a garishly splendid place, named <i>The
+Second Stop</i>. 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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you drop in on Eileen?" Gimp asked right away.</p>
+
+<p>"No. There'll be other occasions," Nelsen laughed. "Someday,
+if we live, she'll own all the joints in the solar system."</p>
+
+<p>"Uh-huh&mdash;I'd bet on it... By the way, there's a grapevine
+yarn around. Somebody kicked Fanshaw&mdash;the Jolly Lad big-shot&mdash;in
+the belly. You, perhaps?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't listen to gossip," Nelsen said primly. "Are you
+serious about going to Mercury?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen felt an urge that was like a crying for freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure I would. But I'm bound to the wheel. Cripes, though&mdash;watch
+yourself, fella. Don't <i>you</i> get into a mess!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hell&mdash;you're the mess specialist, Frank. Fanshaw isn't here
+for fun. And there's been that new trouble at home..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;with all the massed destructive
+power there was, could luck really last forever?</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p113">p.&nbsp;113</a></span>
+for company, he picked up a long-lost voice, falsely sweet,
+then savage at the end:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a Jinx, aren't I, Frankie? A vulture. Nice and cavalier,
+you are. I bet you hoped I was dead. Okay&mdash;Sucker...!"</p>
+
+<p>Tiflin didn't even answer when Nelsen tried to beam him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a Bunch from Baltimore&mdash;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
+<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'asteriod' in the original text.">asteroid</ins>-hoppers and his novice crew which turned out to be
+more rugged than some people might have expected.</p>
+
+<p>Frank got to them just as it was over&mdash;except for the cursing,
+the masculine tears of grief and rage, the promises of revenge.
+Luckily, none of the women had been captured.</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>"Get to it," Nelsen commented.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got something in mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Good night...! I'll send some of my crowd along."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;I don't even think there's a risk..."</p>
+
+<p>There, he knew he exaggerated&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p114">p.&nbsp;114</a></span>
+refuse. Boxes, wrappings, shreds of stellene. Nelsen had
+figured on that.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>With something like dread, Nelsen looked for Tiflin, too.
+But, of course, that worthy wasn't around.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Fanshaw's groups will fight it out for a new leader, Joe,"
+he said. "That should keep them busy, for a while..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;that is, if another gigantic
+blowup didn't happen first...</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen didn't see Ramos' new bubb, nor did he see him leave
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p115">p.&nbsp;115</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;right
+from the rim of the Rings! And lots of data..."</p>
+
+<p>Ramos showed the shadow of a reckless grin of triumph.
+Then he passed out.</p>
+
+<p>Later, Nelsen saw the photographs, and the refrigerated box
+with the clear, plastic sides. Inside it was what looked like
+dirty, granular snow&mdash;frozen water. Which was all it was.
+Unless the fact that it was also the substance of Saturn's Rings
+made a difference.</p>
+
+<p>Saturn&mdash;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...</p>
+
+<p>Cursing under his breath, Nelsen wandered vaguely to <i>The
+Second Stop</i>. There, he saw what probably every spaceman
+had dreamed of. Lucette of Paris swimming nude in a gigantic
+dewdrop&mdash;possible where gravity was almost nil. Music
+played. Beams of colored light swung majestically, with <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'prismastic' in the original text.">prismatic</ins>
+effects through the great, flattened, shimmering ovoid
+of water, while Lucette's motions completed a beautiful
+legend...</p>
+
+<p>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.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p116">p.&nbsp;116</a></span>
+Nelsen followed as soon as he could push his way from the
+packed house. But pursuit was hopeless in the crowded causeway
+outside.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;soft blue, tasteful. Here, she was the cool, poised
+owner, the lady.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;who are international&mdash;could
+be encouraged to do the job for them."</p>
+
+<p>Sudden hollows showed in Eileen's cheeks. "What are you
+going to do?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>She smiled faintly. "All right&mdash;let's. Sit, relax, converse.
+Stop being the Important Personage for a while, Frank."</p>
+
+<p>"Look who's talking. Okay&mdash;what do you know that's new
+to tell?"</p>
+
+<p>"A few things. I keep track of most everybody."</p>
+
+<p>He took her slender hand, brown in his angular fist, that
+was pale from his space gloves. "Gimp, first," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Encouraging information, for once. Here's a hard one&mdash;Jig
+Hollis. The real intelligent man who stayed home. I've envied
+him for years."</p>
+
+<p>"Hmmm&mdash;yes, Frank. Intelligent, maybe&mdash;but he never
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p117">p.&nbsp;117</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>"Hell!" Nelsen said flatly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now who else should I gossip about?" Eileen questioned.
+"Oh, yes&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, looked unhappy and tired. "The celebrity," she
+said. "Mashed up. But he'll recover&mdash;this time. I've seen him&mdash;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&mdash;hello&mdash;goodbye. A kid with gaudy
+banners flying, if he lives to be forty&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah. There was a cute little girl at Serene."</p>
+
+<p>"Jennie Harper. She married one of those singing Moon
+prospectors. Somebody murdered them both&mdash;way out on Far
+Side."</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>Within forty minutes David Lester was showing him some
+pictures that a hopper had brought in from a vault in a surface-asteroid.</p>
+
+<p>On the screen, great, mottled shapes moved through a lush
+forest. Thousands of tiny, flitting bat-like creatures&mdash;miniature
+pterodactyls of the terrestrial Age of Reptiles&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Hey!" Nelsen said mildly, as his jaded mind responded.</p>
+
+<p>Lester nodded. "<i>They</i> were on Earth, too&mdash;as the Martians
+must have been&mdash;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,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p118">p.&nbsp;118</a></span>
+which they were building in space. Spherical. About six miles
+in diameter, I calculate. Shall I show you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No... I think I'll toddle over to the offices, Les. Keep
+wearing those Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in
+his..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;somehow&mdash;nothing more. Evidently some of the attackers
+had been only half hearted, <i>this time</i>. Reprieve...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p119">p.&nbsp;119</a></span>
+felt kind of fed up. He felt as if the end of everything he knew
+had crept inevitably a little closer.</p>
+
+<p>He beamed Mars&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me&mdash;Frank Nelsen&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>His old uncertainties about talking to her evaporated now
+that he was doing it.</p>
+
+<p>"For Pete's sake&mdash;Frank!" he heard her laugh happily, still
+sounding like the neighbor kid. "Gosh, it's good to hear you!"</p>
+
+<p>He left for Post One, soon after that. Nowadays, it was almost
+a miniature of the ever more magnificent&mdash;if insecure&mdash;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&mdash;just
+another stooge...</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen went into the office, his fists clenched overdramatically.
+"I'm taking a leave, Art&mdash;maybe a long one," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Art Kuzak stared at him. "You damned, independent bums&mdash;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&mdash;who knows...?"</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen joined a KRNH bubb convoy&mdash;Earthbound,
+but also passing fairly close to Mars&mdash;within a few hours.</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of
+smelted metal rods&mdash;tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The
+sheaves had their own propelling ionic motors. He lazed like
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p120">p.&nbsp;120</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But the memory&mdash;or ghost&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Every twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes&mdash;the
+length of the Martian day&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought perhaps you and your group had gotten restless
+and had started out for the Belt already," he laughed during
+their first conversation.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I
+considered Earth safe&mdash;instinctively."</p>
+
+<p>But he was right in the first place. It <i>was</i> a mystery&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;quite
+an unusual luxury.</p>
+
+<p>It took a long time to reach Phobos. They gave him shots
+there&mdash;new preventative medicine that was partially effective
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p121">p.&nbsp;121</a></span>
+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&mdash;low, dusty domes, many of them deserted, now, at
+the edge of the airfield, a lazily-spinning wind <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'guage' in the original text.">gauge</ins>, tractors,
+auto-jeeps, several helicopters.</p>
+
+<p>He stepped down with his gear. Mars was all around him:
+A few ground-clinging growths nearby&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;Nelsen could
+hear the faint sough of the wind.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Dug into the salt-bearing ground at intervals, he knew, were
+the fire weapons ready to throw oxygen and synthetic napalm&mdash;jellied
+gasoline. Never yet had they been discharged, along
+this defense line. But you could never be sure just what might
+be necessary here.</p>
+
+<p>A man of about thirty had approached. "I meet the new arrivals,"
+he said. "If you'll come along with me, Mr. Nelsen..."</p>
+
+<p>He was dark, and medium large, and he had a genial way.
+He looked like a hopper&mdash;an asteroid-miner&mdash;the tough, level-headed
+kind that adjusts to space and keeps his balance.</p>
+
+<p>"Name's Ed Huth," he continued, as they walked to the reception
+dome. "Canadian. Good, international crowd here&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Huth's geniality had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>The metal box was a yard high, and twice as long and wide.
+It stood, like a memorial, before the reception dome entrance.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p122">p.&nbsp;122</a></span>
+A light shone beyond the glass-covered slot, as Nelsen bent to
+peer.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;vegetable,
+light-sensitive cells developed into actual visual organs. The
+plant had the usual tympanic pods of its kind&mdash;a band of
+muscle-like tissue stretched across a hollow interior&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;in another
+approach to science. Now, Nelsen felt the tingling revulsion
+and hatred.</p>
+
+<p>"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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p123">p.&nbsp;123</a></span>
+you, indoors, is sufficient. I was here before there was any
+trouble. When it came, it was a shambles..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or what is possible. These devils&mdash;you get to hate them
+in your sleep. If their flesh&mdash;or their methods&mdash;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?..."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen smiled. "I <i>am</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;at least from what you
+just saw&mdash;as you probably know..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Your photographs don't lie, Nance," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours do, Frank," she answered with complete poise. "You
+look a lot less grim and tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," he told her. "I'll be right back..."</p>
+
+<p>He went with Ed Huth to ditch his roll in his sleeping
+cubicle, get cleaned up and change his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>She <i>was</i> beautiful, she had grave moods, she was wearing his
+fabulous bracelet&mdash;if only not to offend him. But when he returned,
+he met two of the girls who had come out to Mars with
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p124">p.&nbsp;124</a></span>
+her&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>But much of his feeling of separation from her disappeared
+as they sat alone in the lounge, talking&mdash;first about Jarviston,
+then about here. Nance had available information about the
+thickets pretty well down pat.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you say that?" Nelsen asked.</p>
+
+<p>He was encouraging her, of course. But he wasn't being
+patronizing. Frost tingled in his nerves. He wanted to know
+her version.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll show you the little museum we have," she replied, her
+eyes widening slightly. "This is probably old hat to you&mdash;but
+it's weird&mdash;it gives you the creeps..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The first display was centered around a tapered brass tube&mdash;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&mdash;a honeycomb
+structure of waxy vegetable tissue, detailed with thousands
+of tiny ducts and hairlike feelers.</p>
+
+<p>"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 <i>them</i>. 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&mdash;for
+a special purpose, Dr. Pacetti believes. A test&mdash;perhaps an
+analysis. They <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'exhude' in the original text.">exude</ins> an acid, to dissolve a little of the metal.
+It's like a human chemist working. Only, perhaps, better&mdash;more
+directly&mdash;with specialized feelers and sensing organs."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p125">p.&nbsp;125</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nance's quiet voice had a slight, awed quaver at the end.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What else?" he urged.</p>
+
+<p>They stood before another sealed case containing a horny,
+oval pod, cut open. It had closed around a lump of greenish
+stone.</p>
+
+<p>"Malachite," Nance breathed. "One kind of copper ore.
+<i>They</i> 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&mdash;then a weak electric current&mdash;from a kind of battery... Oh,
+nobody should laugh, Frank&mdash;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&mdash;I
+only heard our orientation lecture, while we toured this
+museum. But see those small compartments in the thick shells
+of the pod&mdash;with the membranes separating them? All of them
+contained fluids&mdash;some acid, others alkaline. Mixed in with the
+cellulose of the membranes, you can see both silvery and reddish
+specks&mdash;as if <i>they</i> 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..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;laminated
+or separated by narrow air spaces as in a capacitor, for
+instance... Balls of massed fibre, glinting... Curious, spiral
+formations of waxy tissue...</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;if you're fool enough to get so close that you can
+touch them. And they do emit radio impulses on certain wavelengths.
+Signals&mdash;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 <i>make</i> our
+apparatus. They <i>grow</i> them, <i>build</i> them&mdash;with their own living
+tissue cells&mdash;in a way that must be under their constant, precise
+control. I suppose they even work from a carefully
+thought-out design&mdash;a kind of cryptic blueprint... Go along
+with the idea&mdash;or not&mdash;as you choose. But our experts suspect
+that much of what we have here represents research apparatus&mdash;physical,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p126">p.&nbsp;126</a></span>
+chemical, electrical. That <i>they</i> 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&mdash;or the worst&mdash;is still
+coming. Right here, Frank..."</p>
+
+<p>The case showed several small, urn-like growths, sectioned
+like the other specimens.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen grinned slightly. "All right&mdash;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&mdash;viruses, germs, vegetable-allergy substances. These
+are their inventing, developing and brewing bottles&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is where my lab job begins, Frank," she told him.
+"Helping develop anti-virus shots&mdash;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&mdash;Jimmy&mdash;James Scanlon. Come along. I'll show
+you, Frank..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;Nance's age. His bloodshot eyes stared at terrors that
+no one else could see.</p>
+
+<p>Nance called softly through the thin infection barrier.
+"Jimmy!"</p>
+
+<p>He moaned a little. "Francy..."</p>
+
+<p>"High fever, Frank," Nance whispered. "Typical Syrtis. He
+wants to be home&mdash;with his girl. I guess you know that nostalgia&mdash;yearning
+terribly for old, familiar surroundings&mdash;is a
+major symptom. It's like a command from <i>them</i>&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p127">p.&nbsp;127</a></span>
+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&mdash;which seems terrible for someone
+not quite well. I hope that Jimmy bears up all right&mdash;he's
+such a kid... Let's get out of here..."</p>
+
+<p>Her expression was gently maternal. Or maybe it was something
+more?</p>
+
+<p>Back in the lounge, she asked, "What will you do here,
+Frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;on foot. He always seemed lucky
+or careful, or smart. After he got lost, his wife&mdash;a nurse from
+here whose name had been Selma Washington&mdash;went looking
+for him. She never was found either."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh?" Nelsen said in mild startlement.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes... Talk to Ed Huth. There still are helicopter patrols&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He couldn't say that he didn't see Mars&mdash;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&mdash;still faintly
+tainted with radioactivity&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p128">p.&nbsp;128</a></span>
+gasoline-jelly to permit the passage of vehicles, had again
+become completely overgrown&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Inevitably the evening came when he said, "We could fly
+out again, Nance. For an hour or two. It doesn't break any
+rules."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"It's barren&mdash;we could land," Nelsen suggested quickly.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;which is
+food for a fierce soul. Frank Nelsen and Nance Codiss were
+fierce souls.</p>
+
+<p>They'd stand by the heli and look out over Syrtis, their
+gloved fingers entwined. If they couldn't kiss, here, through
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p129">p.&nbsp;129</a></span>
+their helmets, that was merely comic pathos&mdash;another thing
+to laugh and be happy over.</p>
+
+<p>"Our wind-blown hill," Nance chuckled on that last evening.
+"Looking down over a culture, a history&mdash;maybe arguments,
+lawsuits, jokes, parties; gossip too, for all we know&mdash;disguised
+as a huge briar patch that makes funny noises."</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up&mdash;I love you," Nelsen gruffed.</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up yourself&mdash;it's you I love," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or long, sharp thorns&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Nance screamed. Nelsen wasn't at all sure that he didn't
+scream himself as the first anguish dizzied and half blinded
+him.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>His blood carried a virus to his brain about as quickly as it
+would have carried a cobra's venom. <i>They</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>For a while, as the black, starshot night closed in, Nelsen
+knew, or remembered, nothing at all&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;its black bulk was visible against
+the stars. Phobos hadn't risen; Deimos, the farther moon, was
+too small to furnish appreciable light.</p>
+
+<p>Something touched him from behind, and he recoiled, pushing
+Nance back. He yanked the machete from his belt, and
+struck blindly... Oh, <i>no!</i>&mdash;you didn't get caught like this&mdash;not
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p130">p.&nbsp;130</a></span>
+usually, he told himself. Not in their actual grip! They
+were too slow&mdash;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&mdash;wasn't
+it...?</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;then hers. Trying to get her free, he dropped
+his machete...</p>
+
+<p>Huth's voice spoke in his helmet-phone. "We hear you,
+Nelsen! Hold out... We'll be there in forty minutes..."</p>
+
+<p>Yeah&mdash;forty minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's silly to be so scared, Frankie..." he heard Nance
+stammer almost apologetically. Dear Nance...</p>
+
+<p>Screaming, he kicked out again and again with his heavy
+boots, and got both her and himself loose.</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't any good. A shape loomed near them. A thing
+that must have sprung from <i>them</i>&mdash;someway. A huge, zombie
+form&mdash;the ugliest part of this night of anguish and distortion.
+But he was sure that it was real.</p>
+
+<p>The thing struck him in the stomach. Then there was a biting
+pain in his shoulder...</p>
+
+<p>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...?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that he was always struggling impossibly to get
+himself and Nance somewhere&mdash;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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Reclining in another lawn chair beside his was Nance, her
+eyes closed, her face thin and pale. He was frightened&mdash;until
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p131">p.&nbsp;131</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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...!"</p>
+
+<p>Mitch Storey was there in a moment&mdash;dressed in dungarees
+and work shirt like he used to be, but taller, even leaner, and
+unsmiling.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen got up. "Thanks, Mitch," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Their voices stayed low and intense.</p>
+
+<p>"For nothing, Frank. I'm damned glad to see you, but you
+still shouldn't have come nosing. 'Cause&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen felt angry and exasperated. But he had a haunting
+thought about a lanky colored kid in Jarviston, Minnesota. A
+guy with a dream&mdash;or perhaps a prescient glimpse of his own
+future.</p>
+
+<p>"What's a pal supposed to do?" he growled. "For a helluva
+long time you've answered nobody&mdash;though everyone in the
+Bunch must have tried beaming you."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;better than those at the
+Station."</p>
+
+<p>"You've done all right for yourself here, haven't you,
+Mitch?" Nelsen remarked with a dash of mockery. "All the
+modern conveniences&mdash;in the middle of the forbidden wilds of
+Syrtis Major."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p132">p.&nbsp;132</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Frank&mdash;'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&mdash;broke my leg&mdash;out there. I thought sure I was finished
+when they got hold of me. But I just lay there, playing on my
+mouth organ&mdash;an old hymn&mdash;inside my helmet. Maybe it was
+the music&mdash;they must have felt the radio impulses of my
+tooting before. Or else they knew, somehow, that I was on
+their side&mdash;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&mdash;a
+guinea-pig to study and otherwise. For all I know, examining
+my body may have helped them improve their weapons...
+Anyhow&mdash;you won't believe this&mdash;'cause it's sort of fantastic&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Storey's quiet voice died away.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you going to do, Mitch? Just stay here for good?"</p>
+
+<p>"What else&mdash;if I can<ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: extra quotation mark removed from the original text.">?</ins> This is better than anything I remember.
+Peaceful, too. If they study me, I study them&mdash;not like
+a real scientist&mdash;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 <i>are</i> 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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;thoughts
+follow you. But now&mdash;dammit&mdash;I want to go home!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's regular, Frank. 'Cause you've got Syrtis. Chronic,
+now&mdash;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?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;I promise&mdash;if you think secrecy makes any difference.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p133">p.&nbsp;133</a></span>
+Otherwise&mdash;thanks for everything... By the way&mdash;do you
+ever listen in on outside news?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enough. Still quiet... And a fella named Miguel Ramos&mdash;with
+nerve-controlled clamps for hands&mdash;got a new, special
+bubb and took off for Pluto."</p>
+
+<p>"No! Damn fool... Almost as loony as you are, Mitch."</p>
+
+<p>"Less... Wake up, Nance. Dinner... Chicken&mdash;raised
+right here..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;yet...
+But I'm <i>not</i> going home, Frank&mdash;not even when it is allowed.
+I set out&mdash;I'm sticking&mdash;I'm not turning tail. It's what people
+have got to do&mdash;in space more than ever..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;admirable, if perhaps
+destructive. "Love yuh," Frank kept saying. "Love yuh,
+Sweetie..."</p>
+
+<p>Two days later, before the frigid dawn, they saw the last of
+Mitch Storey and his slender, beautiful wife with her challenging
+brown eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful that you do right for Mitch and&mdash;these <i>folks</i>,"
+she warned almost commandingly as the old heli landed in the
+desert a few miles from the Station. "What would you do&mdash;if
+outsiders came blundering into your world by the hundreds,
+making trails, killing you with fire? At first, <i>they</i> didn't even
+fight back."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;to change everything. Sure&mdash;some will be sympathetic.
+But when there's practical pressure&mdash;need&mdash;danger&mdash;economics...?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, Mitch," Nelsen answered in the same tone
+as before. "Your thickets do have a pretty good defense."</p>
+
+<p>But in his heart he suspected that fierce human persistence
+couldn't be stopped&mdash;<i>as long as there were humans left</i>. Mitch
+and his star folk couldn't withdraw from the mainstream of
+competition&mdash;inherent in life&mdash;that was spreading again across
+the solar system. They could only stand their ground, take
+their fearful chances, be part of it.</p>
+
+<p>One of the last things Mitch said, was, "Got any cigarettes,
+Frank? Selma likes one, once in a while."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p134">p.&nbsp;134</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Sure. Three packs here inside my Archer. Mighty small
+hospitality gift, Mitch..."</p>
+
+<p>After the 'copter drifted away, it seemed that a curtain drew
+over Nelsen's mind, blurring the whole memory. It was as
+though <i>they</i> 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.</p>
+
+<p>"Should we believe it?" Nance whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"My cigarettes are gone," Frank told her.</p>
+
+<p>At the Survey Station they got weary looks from Ed Huth.
+"I guess I picked a wrong man, Nelsen," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks as though you did, Ed," Frank replied. "I'm really
+sorry."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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...!"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;almost
+worse&mdash;merely the senseless result of space-poisoned men
+kicking off the lid in a spree of hell-raising humor and fun?</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen was bitter. But he also felt the primitive excitement&mdash;almost
+an eagerness. That was the savage paradox in life.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;you're going..."</p>
+
+<p>Nance Codiss didn't have that experience. Her lab background
+wasn't enough. So she was stuck, on Mars.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen had been pestering her to marry him. Now, in a
+corner of the crowded lounge, he tried again.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. "You'd still have to leave me, Frank,"
+she told him. "Because that's the way strong people <i>have</i> to
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p135">p.&nbsp;135</a></span>
+be&mdash;when there's trouble to be met. Let's wait. Let's know a
+little better where we're at&mdash;please, darling. I'll be all right.
+Contact me when you can..."</p>
+
+<p>Her tone was low and tender and unsteady. He hugged her
+close.</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+
+
+
+<h2 class="chapter">VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>There had been hardly any warning, since the first attack
+had sprung from the sub-levels of the city itself.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The sack of the town had begun at once, from within, even
+before chunks of asteroid material, man-accelerated and&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p136">p.&nbsp;136</a></span>
+had seemed out of place, a target shining for thousands of
+miles.</p>
+
+<p>Haw, haw...! Nelsen could almost hear the coarse laughter
+of the Jolly Lads, as they broke it up, robbed it, raped it&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the rugged, level-headed
+ones who deserved the name&mdash;it had meant much,
+though they had visited it for only a few days of fun, now and
+then.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen overheard words that helped complete the pictures:</p>
+
+<p>"I'll get them... They had my wife..."</p>
+
+<p>"This was planned&mdash;you know where..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I killed a man, Frank&mdash;with this pre-Asteroidal knife. He
+was after Helen and my son..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Belt Parnay was the name of the leader whom everybody
+really wanted to get. Belt Parnay&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p137">p.&nbsp;137</a></span>
+similar. It was as if, out of the darker side of human nature, a
+kind of reincarnation would always take place.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Some captives were recovered. Others were found, murdered.
+Fortunately, Pallastown was still largely a man's city.
+But pursuit and revenge still went on...</p>
+
+<p>Post One was intact. Art Kuzak had surrounded it with a
+cordon of tough and angry <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'assteroid' in the original text.">asteroid</ins>-hoppers. It was the same
+with the other posts, except Five and Nine, which were wiped
+out.</p>
+
+<p>"Back at last, eh, Nelsen?" Art roared angrily, as soon as
+Frank had entered his office.</p>
+
+<p>"A fact we should accept, not discuss," Nelsen responded
+dryly. "You know the things we need."</p>
+
+<p>"Um-hmm&mdash;Nelsen. To rescue and restore Pallastown&mdash;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&mdash;if
+some of it is to survive!"</p>
+
+<p>It made another picture&mdash;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 <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'advertized' in the original text.">advertised</ins>. Art
+Kuzak had the gift of both big dreaming and of practice. He'd
+talked of such things, before.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>really</i> got&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p138">p.&nbsp;138</a></span>
+fraction of the company in goods? We'll take up the dispersal
+problem as soon as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Art Kuzak could only sigh heavily, grin a lopsided grin, and
+produce. Soon a great caravan of stuff was on the move.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<i>Second Stop</i> utterly in a flash of incandescence. Back in Archer,
+she looked almost as she used to look at Hendricks'. Her
+smile was rueful.</p>
+
+<p>"Shucks, I'm all right, Frank," she said. "Even if Insurance,
+with so many disaster-claims, can't pay me&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bet," Nelsen joshed. "Otherwise, what have you heard
+and seen? There's a certain fella..."</p>
+
+<p>Right away, she thought he meant Ramos. "The damfool&mdash;why
+ask me, Frank?" she sniffed, her expression sour and sad.
+"How long has he been gone again, now? As usual he was
+proposing&mdash;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&mdash;ah&mdash;skip it!"</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen smiled with half of his mouth. "I wanted to know
+about Ramos, too, Eileen. Thanks. But I was talking about
+Tiflin."</p>
+
+<p>"Umhmm&mdash;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&mdash;almost like
+he used to be. He said that, one of these days&mdash;be cavalier&mdash;I
+was going to get mine. He and Igor eeled away before my
+customers could break their necks."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen showed his teeth. "Thanks again. I wondered," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p139">p.&nbsp;139</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the only course that seemed to
+make any sense just then.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;unless you've got some better suggestions?"</p>
+
+<p>Art Kuzak looked the sketches over shrewdly for half an
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;could it be you're running
+away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," Nelsen answered. "Or following my nose&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p140">p.&nbsp;140</a></span>
+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&mdash;whatever
+can't be supplied now, can follow."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen could tag all of the fierce drives in him with single
+words.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Love. Well, wasn't that part of the first item he had tagged?</p>
+
+<p>Wanderlust. The adventurous distance drive&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;he thought not, but perhaps
+that remained to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Nelsen's drives were very strong, after so much had
+passed around him for so long a time. Thus, maybe he became
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p141">p.&nbsp;141</a></span>
+too idealistic and&mdash;at moments&mdash;almost fanatically believing,
+without enough of the saving grain of doubt and humor. The
+hoppers with him were much like himself&mdash;singly directed by
+what they had lacked for years.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;the jockying
+of a bubb from its blastoff drum, inflating it, rigging it,
+spinning it for centrifugal gravity, and fitting in its internal appointments.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen looked at the fifty-odd stellene rings that they had
+broken out of their containers&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>A bantam-sized hopper named Hank Janns spoke from beside
+Nelsen as they floated near each other. "Pop&mdash;sizzle&mdash;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&mdash;that's the <i>real</i> signal!
+Tell your pals Kuzak that this is the Idea of the Century."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;see how everything shakes down, if you'd rather."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;from Art... Some of the Pallastown convalescents
+will be migrating your way... I'll wrangle free and come
+along... Maybe in about a month..."</p>
+
+<p>He didn't know quite whether to take her at her word&mdash;or
+whether she was somehow hedging. In the Big Vacuum, the
+human mind seemed hard put, quite, to know itself. Distances
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p142">p.&nbsp;142</a></span>
+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&mdash;in some bleak, fatalistic
+way&mdash;it would be just as well in the end, for them both.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, Nance," he said gently. "I'll call again&mdash;the regular
+time..."</p>
+
+<p>Right after that he was talking, over a much greater span, to
+Art Kuzak. "First phase about completed, Art... Finger to
+thumb&mdash;in spite of the troubles elsewhere. So let it roll...!"</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;storage and
+factory&mdash;of Post Three. Also there were over a hundred men
+and thirty-three wives. Many of them were Pallastown refugees.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;the way he gets when things seem to break right."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p143">p.&nbsp;143</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;why didn't anybody ever
+try to beam Gimp and me, anymore? Solar radiation ain't <i>that</i>
+hard to get past... So I had to come sneak a look for myself,
+to see what the Big Deal on the grapevine is."</p>
+
+<p>"We left the back door unlatched for you, Two-and-Two,"
+Nelsen laughed. "And you crept in quietly. Swell to see you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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&mdash;if
+they only include a place for a man to be a little bit himself."</p>
+
+<p>Two-and-Two (George) Baines sighed rapturously and continued.
+"Figure it out to the end, Frankie. No planets left&mdash;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&mdash;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&mdash;to be replaced by a wonderful super-suburbia.
+Or maybe we should say, superbia."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen burst out laughing, at last. "You sly slob...! Anyhow,
+<i>that</i> extreme is <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'milleniums' in the original text.">millenniums</ins> off&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p144">p.&nbsp;144</a></span>
+thirst for danger... Just as there isn't any, now, for us. Except
+that we can keep our weapons handy, and hope... Me&mdash;I'm
+a bit bored with adventure, just at present."</p>
+
+<p>"So am I," Two-and-Two affirmed fervently. "Now, have
+you got me a job, Frankie?"</p>
+
+<p>"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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Like the place?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Love it, Frank," she answered quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;I love you. Only&mdash;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&mdash;for us both... Because you
+might be fumbling, some, too."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>He held her close. "Sure, Nance," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"You probably know that our group from Mars was followed,
+Frank. I hope I'm not a jinx."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you're not. Somebody would have followed&mdash;sometime.
+We're watching and listening. Just keep your Archer
+handy..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p145">p.&nbsp;145</a></span></p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;a
+colossal dewdrop. Within it, a man and two small boys&mdash;no
+doubt father and sons from Pallastown, were swimming, horsing
+around, having a swell time&mdash;only a few feet from nothing.
+Nelsen spoke softly into his radio-phone. "Leland&mdash;close
+down the pool..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Funny that you'd turn up, here&mdash;Igor, is it?" Nelsen said
+dryly.</p>
+
+<p>Igor sniffed, as if with sorrow. He had been roughed up,
+some. "Very funny&mdash;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&mdash;so
+I am informed. I am believing&mdash;okay, Igor. When being
+not true, I am going away again."</p>
+
+<p>The tone was bland. The pale eyes looked naive and artless,
+except, perhaps, for a hard, shrewd glint, deep down.</p>
+
+<p>Joe Kuzak was present. "We searched him, Frank," he said.
+"His bubb, too. He's clean&mdash;as far as we can tell. Not even a
+weapon. I also asked him some questions. I savvy a little of his
+real lingo."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll ask them over," Nelsen answered. "Igor&mdash;a friend
+named Tiflin wouldn't be being around some place, would
+he?"</p>
+
+<p>The large space comedian didn't even hesitate. "I am thinking
+not very far&mdash;not knowing precisely. Somebody more is
+being here, likewise. Belt Parnay. You are knowing this one?
+Plenty Jollies&mdash;new fellas&mdash;not having much supplies&mdash;only
+many new rocket launchers they are receiving from someplace.
+You are understanding this? Bad luck, here, it is meaning."</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>The watch didn't give the alarm for several hours. Three
+hisses in the phones, made vocally. Then one, then two more.
+North, second <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'quandrant' in the original text.">quadrant</ins>, 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&mdash;if
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p146">p.&nbsp;146</a></span>
+Parnay really had them&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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!"</p>
+
+<p>Parnay's tone had shifted, becoming mincingly mocking,
+then hard and joyful at the end.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe he shouldn't have suggested so plainly what would
+happen&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;they
+aren't real outlaws. Do you think they want to keep
+following you around, stinking in their armor&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p147">p.&nbsp;147</a></span>
+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&mdash;away from here, of course... Parnay&mdash;big, important
+Belt Parnay&mdash;are you still alive...?"</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen had his own sneering tone of mockery. He used it
+to best advantage&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Flowers, Parnay? We ain't got many, yet. But you won't
+care... Fellas&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"So&mdash;has it happened?" Nelsen growled into his phone.</p>
+
+<p>"It has," came the mocking answer. "Be cavalier, Nelsen.
+Salute the new top outlaw... Don't faint&mdash; 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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p148">p.&nbsp;148</a></span>
+Make your own place&mdash;town&mdash;whatever you want to call
+it... Leland, Crobert, Sharpe&mdash;fit these guys out, will
+you...?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen lowered his voice and called, "Nance?"</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>"You guys can find something useful to do," Nelsen snapped
+at the gathering crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>On the sundeck, Tiflin spoke again. "I suppose you've got
+it figured, Nelsen?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;like part of it, <i>or like a good cop</i>.
+The first might still be right."</p>
+
+<p>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..."</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, Joe growled, "Hell&mdash;what do you know!
+Him...! Special Police. Undercover. U.N., U.S., or what?"</p>
+
+<p>"Shut up," Nelsen growled.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p149">p.&nbsp;149</a></span>
+of trouble&mdash;especially not out here in raw space, that was still
+far too big for man-made order.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;or were born to&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>For example, Nelsen often saw two children and a dog
+racing around inside one of the rotating bubbs&mdash;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&mdash;and accept&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>But is wasn't thinking about such grim matters that actually
+threw Frank Nelsen&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, though, in his own quarters, he began to
+laugh. Her presence was so incongruous, so fantastic...</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p150">p.&nbsp;150</a></span>
+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...</p>
+
+<p>Yet he couldn't help thinking back to the Bunch, the
+Planet Strappers. To the wild fulfillment they had sought...
+So&mdash;most of them had made it. They had become men&mdash;the
+hard way. Except, of course, Eileen&mdash;the distaff side...
+They had planned, callowly, to meet and compare adventures
+in ten years. And this was still less than seven...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Glen Tiflin&mdash;the sour, space-wild punk who had become a
+cop. Had Tiflin even saved his&mdash;Frank Nelsen's&mdash;life, once,
+long ago, persuading a Jolly Lad leader to cast him adrift
+for a joke, rather than to kill him and Ramos outright...?</p>
+
+<p>Charlie Reynolds&mdash;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&mdash;except
+to his acquaintances.</p>
+
+<p>Jig Hollins, the guy who had played it safe, was just as
+dead.</p>
+
+<p>Eileen Sands was a celebrity in Serene, in Pallastown and
+the whole Belt.</p>
+
+<p>Mex Ramos&mdash;of the flapping squirrel tails on an old motor
+scooter&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Art Kuzak, one-time hunkie football player, was a power
+among the asteroids. His brother, Joe, had scarcely changed,
+personally.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p151">p.&nbsp;151</a></span>
+surprise that he must be almost as rich as old J. John Reynolds,
+who was still drawing wealth from a comparatively small loan&mdash;futilely
+at his age, unless he had really aimed at the ideal
+of bettering the future.</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>Maybe the old problems were beat. Safety? If deployment
+was the answer to that, it was certainly there&mdash;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 <i>too</i> quickly.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;everybody
+sometimes forgot&mdash;learn to live with it without
+losing their respect for it, until suddenly it killed them?</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p152">p.&nbsp;152</a></span>
+who could be taking devil-killers all the time?</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;for you. I might follow mine. I don't
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Joe and Two-and-Two are around&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;funny how corn and kids grew at almost zero-gravity.</p>
+
+<p>The boy handed Nelsen a letter. "From my father and
+mother, sir," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen read the typed missive.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;a small imposition.
+If you can manage it, please look in on him once in a
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p153">p.&nbsp;153</a></span>
+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."</p>
+
+<p>A lot of nerve, Nelsen thought first. But he tried to grin
+engagingly at the kid and almost succeeded.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;in the old colonial pattern&mdash;to
+the place that his parents regarded as home?</p>
+
+<p>"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>I'm</i> afraid of. I never quite got over it.
+Silly, huh?"</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p154">p.&nbsp;154</a></span>
+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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;don't
+start hiccuping again. How old are you&mdash;twenty-five,
+or twenty-five thousand years? Wups&mdash;careful...</p>
+
+<p>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...</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A few more buildings&mdash;that was about all that was visibly
+different in Jarviston, Minnesota.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The cop grinned. "Get settled in a hotel, buddy," he said.
+"Or else move on, out of town."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen grinned back, and ambled out to the highway,
+where intermittent clumps of traffic whispered.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>The people that he knew, and the events that he had experienced
+Out There, were like myths, now. <i>How could he ever
+put Here and There together, and unite the mismatched halves
+of himself and his experience?</i> He had been born on Earth,
+the single home of his kind from the beginning. How could
+he ever even have been Out There?</p>
+
+<p>He didn't try to hitch a ride. He walked fourteen miles to
+the next town, bought a small tent, provisions and a special,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p155">p.&nbsp;155</a></span>
+miniaturized radio. Then he slipped into the woods, along
+Hickman's Lake, where he used to go.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>was</i> such a thing?
+No&mdash;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&mdash;but not here...</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally he listened to news on the radio. But mostly
+he shut it off&mdash;out. Until boredom at last began to overtake
+him&mdash;because he had been used to so much more than what
+was here. Until&mdash;specifically&mdash;one morning, when the news
+came too quickly, and with too much impact. It was a recording,
+scratchy, and full of unthinkable distance.</p>
+
+<p>"... Frank, Gimp, Two-and-Two, Paul, Mr. Reynolds,
+Otto, Les, Joe, Art, everybody&mdash;especially you, Eileen&mdash;remember
+what you promised, when I get back, Eileen...!
+Here I am, on Pluto&mdash;edge of the star desert! Clear sailing&mdash;all
+the way. All I see, yet, is twilight, rocks, mountains, snow
+which must be frozen atmosphere&mdash;and one big star, Sol. But
+I'll get the data, and be back..."</p>
+
+<p>Nelsen listened to the end, with panic in his face&mdash;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&mdash;Here, but from Out
+There&mdash;it became like a joining force to bring them both together
+within himself. Though how could it be...?</p>
+
+<p>"Ramos," he said aloud. "Made it... Another good guy,
+accomplishing what he wanted... Hey...! Hey, that's
+swell... Like things should happen."</p>
+
+<p>He didn't hiccup anymore, or laugh. By being very careful,
+he just grinned, instead. He arose to his feet, slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"What am I doing here&mdash;wasting time?" he seemed to ask
+the woods.</p>
+
+<p>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?</p>
+
+<p>Hendricks' was the most logical place for Nelsen to go, but
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p156">p.&nbsp;156</a></span>
+he passed it by, following a hunch to his old street. <i>She</i> had
+almost said that she might come home, too. He touched the
+buzzer.</p>
+
+<p>Not looking too completely dishevelled himself, he stood
+there, as a girl&mdash;briskly early in dress and impulse, so as not
+to waste the bright morning&mdash;opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Yeah, Nance&mdash;me," he croaked apologetically. "Ramos has
+reached Pluto!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know, <i>Frankie</i>!" she burst out.</p>
+
+<p>But his words rushed on. "I've been goofing off&mdash;by Hickman's
+Lake. Over now. Emotional indigestion, I guess&mdash;from
+living too big, before I could take it. I figured you <i>might</i> be
+here. If you weren't, I'd come... Because I know where I
+belong. Nance&mdash;I hope you're not angry. Maybe we're pulling
+together, at last?"</p>
+
+<p>"Angry&mdash;when I was the first fumbler? How could that be,
+Frank? Oh, I knew where you were&mdash;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&mdash;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..."</p>
+
+<p>His arms went tight around her, right there on the old
+porch. "Nance&mdash;love you," he whispered. "And we've got to
+be tough. Everybody's got to be tough&mdash;to match what we've
+come to. Even little kids. But it was always like that&mdash;on any
+kind of frontier, wasn't it? A few will get killed, but more will
+live&mdash;many more..."</p>
+
+<p>Like that, Frank Nelsen shook the last of the cobwebs out
+of his brain&mdash;and got back to his greater destiny.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll buy all of that philosophy," Nance chuckled gently.
+"But you still look as though you needed some breakfast,
+Frank."</p>
+
+<p>He grinned. "Later. Let's go to see Paul, first. A big day
+for him&mdash;because of Ramos. Paul is getting feeble, I suppose?"
+Nelsen's face had sobered.</p>
+
+<p>"Not so you could notice it much, Frank," Nance answered.
+"There's a new therapy&mdash;another side of What's Coming, I
+guess..."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>In the display window, however, there gleamed a brand-new
+Archer Nine, beautiful as a garden or a town floating, unsupported,
+<span class="pagenumber"><a name="p157">p.&nbsp;157</a></span>
+under the stars&mdash;beautiful as the Future, which was
+born of the Past.</p>
+
+<p>A Bunch of fellas&mdash;the current crop of aficionados&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Go ahead&mdash;open the door. Or are you still scared?" Nance
+challenged lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>"Superbia?" Nance teased.</p>
+
+<p>"That is somebody's impertinent joke!" he growled in
+feigned solemnity. "Anyhow, it would be too bad if something
+<i>that</i> important couldn't take a little ribbing. Shucks&mdash;we've
+hardly <i>started</i> to work, yet!"</p>
+
+<p>He drew Nance back a pace, out of sight of those in the
+store, and kissed her long and rather savagely.</p>
+
+<p>"With all its super-complications, life still seems pretty nice,"
+he commented.</p>
+
+<p>The door squeaked, just as it used to, as Nelsen pushed it
+open. The old overhead bell jangled.</p>
+
+<p>Pale, watery eyes lifted and lighted with another fulfilment.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Frank! Long time no see...!"</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p158">p.&nbsp;158</a></span></p>
+
+<p style="margin-bottom: 4em">&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="p159">p.&nbsp;159</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p><big><b>FOR SCIENCE FICTION FANS&mdash;</b></big></p>
+
+<p><b>A space-age collection of startling adventures</b></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>TOMORROW AND TOMORROW</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Hunt Collins.</b> Battle of strange cults for control of the world. (G654)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>SIX x H</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Robert Heinlein.</b> Imaginative tales from sorcery to the fourth dimension.
+(G642)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>THE SYNTHETIC MAN</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Theodore Sturgeon.</b> A startling science-fiction <ins class="typo" title="Transcriber's Note: 'fantasty' in the original text.">fantasy</ins> of a man who
+suddenly discovers he is not human. (G636)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>THE GREEN RAIN</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Paul Tabori.</b> A fantastic tale of a world gone mad. (G624)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>ORBIT UNLIMITED</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Poul Anderson.</b> Earth had no room for them&mdash;their only escape was the
+most dangerous voyage of all time. (G615)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>AGAINST THE FALL OF NIGHT</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Arthur C. Clarke.</b> A story of an unimaginable future one billion years
+from now. (G554)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>VENUS PLUS X</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Theodore Sturgeon.</b> He was in a world of strange creatures, unheard-of
+buildings and an unfamiliar language. (G544)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>L. Sprague de Camp &amp; Fletcher Pratt.</b> Two scientists explore a world
+where magic works. (G530)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>THE TOMORROW PEOPLE</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>Judith Merril.</b> He came back from Mars with a secret too terrible to
+remember. (G502)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>MAN OF MANY MINDS</b></p>
+
+<p><small><b>E. Everett Evans.</b> In his brain was the power to rule the world and the
+Universe. (G458)</small></p>
+
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><b><i>SPECIAL: 3 BOOKS FOR $1, POSTAGE FREE</i></b></p>
+
+<hr style="border-top: 2px solid black; border-bottom: 2px solid black; border-style: dashed;">
+
+<p><small><b>PYRAMID BOOKS, Dept. G658, 444 Madison Ave., New York 22, N. Y.</b><br>
+Please send me the following books at the special price of 3 books
+for $1, postage free (single copies 35¢ each plus 10¢ mailing charges).
+I enclose $1 ........................</small></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center"><small><b>G654  G642  G636  G624  G615  G554  G544  G530  G502  G458</b></small></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center">Name ....................................................................</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center">Address ................................................................</p>
+
+<p style="text-align: center; margin-bottom: 4em">City ........................... State .................................</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenumber"><a name="backcover">back cover</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>THE PLANET<br>
+STRAPPERS</h2>
+
+<p><img src="images/backcover.jpg" alt="back cover illustration" title="back cover illustration"  align="left" width="203" height="600"></p>
+
+<p><b>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.</b></p>
+
+<p><b>THE PLANET STRAPPERS got what
+they wanted&mdash;a start on the road to
+the stars&mdash;but no one brought up
+on Earth could have imagined what
+was waiting for them Out There!</b></p>
+
+<p>In THE PLANET STRAPPERS, Ray Gallun
+has written a story of the Day
+After Tomorrow&mdash;a story of what it
+will be like for the men who cross the
+space frontier&mdash;a story that some
+of us will be <b>living</b> some day....</p>
+
+<p><b>A PYRAMID BOOK</b></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right"><b>35c</b></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right"><small>COVER: JOHN SCHOENHERR</small></p>
+
+<p style="text-align: right"><small>Printed in U.S.A.</small></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
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+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,8315 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Planet Strappers
+
+Author: Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+Release Date: April 13, 2008 [EBook #25067]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLANET STRAPPERS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Joel Schlosberg, Fred Kiesche and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+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 puree
+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 Jose, only worse. He was a powder monkey in
+Mexico. It got so he thought dynamite was his friend. Well, there wasn't
+even anything to put in his coffin..."
+
+The luxurious interlude passed, and they reverted mostly to Spartan
+meals of space-gruel, except for some fresh-grown lettuce. Mars became
+an agate bead, then a 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 blase. 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...!"
+
+
+
+
+*FOR SCIENCE FICTION FANS--*
+
+*A space-age collection of startling adventures*
+
+
+*TOMORROW AND TOMORROW*
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+*Hunt Collins.* Battle of strange cults for control of the world. (G654)
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+
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+*Arthur C. Clarke.* A story of an unimaginable future one billion years
+from now. (G554)
+
+
+*VENUS PLUS X*
+
+*Theodore Sturgeon.* He was in a world of strange creatures, unheard-of
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+*THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER*
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+*L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt.* Two scientists explore a world
+where magic works. (G530)
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+
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+remember. (G502)
+
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+*MAN OF MANY MINDS*
+
+*E. Everett Evans.* In his brain was the power to rule the world and the
+Universe. (G458)
+
+
+*SPECIAL: 3 BOOKS FOR $1, POSTAGE FREE*
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+*PYRAMID BOOKS, Dept. G658, 444 Madison Ave., New York 22, N. Y.*
+
+Please send me the following books at the special price of 3 books for
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+Name....................................................................
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+Address ................................................................
+
+City ........................... State .................................
+
+
+
+
+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"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Planet Strappers, by Raymond Zinke Gallun
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLANET STRAPPERS ***
+
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