Double Star. Robert Anson Heinlein. A Puke (TM) Audiobook

Double Star.
Robert Anson Heinlein.
Chapter One.
If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place, he’s a spaceman.
It is a logical necessity. His profession makes him feel like boss of all creation; when he sets foot dirtside he is slumming among the peasants. As for his sartorial inelegance, a man who is in uniform nine tenths of the time and is more used to deep space than to civilization can hardly be expected to know how to dress properly. He is a sucker for the alleged tailors who swarm around every spaceport peddling “ground outfits.”
I could see that this big-boned fellow had been dressed by Omar the Tentmaker-padded shoulders that were too big to start with, shorts cut so that they crawled up his hairy thighs as he sat down, a ruffled chemise that might have looked well on a cow.
But I kept my opinion to myself and bought him a drink with my last half-Imperial, considering it an investment, spacemen being the way they are about money. “Hot jets!” I said as we touched glasses. He gave me a quick glance.
That was my initial mistake in dealing with Dak Broadbent. Instead of answering, “Clear space!” or, “Safe grounding!” as he should have, he looked me over and said softly, “A nice sentiment, but to the wrong man. I’ve never been out.”
That was another good place to keep my mouth shut. Spacemen did not often come to the bar of Casa Manana; it was not their Sort of hotel and it’s miles from the port. When one shows up in ground clothes, seeks a dark corner of the bar, and objects to being called a spaceman, that’s his business. I had picked that spot myself so that I could see without being seen-I owed a little money here and there at the time, nothing important but embarrassing. I should have assumed that he had his reasons, too, and respected them.
But my vocal cords lived their own life, wild and free. “Don’t give me that, shipmate,” I replied. “If you’re a ground hog, I’m Mayor of Tycho City. I’ll wager you’ve done more drinking on Mars,” I added, noticing the cautious way he lifted his glass, a dead giveaway of low-gravity habits, “than you’ve ever done on Earth.”
“Keep your voice down!” he cut in without moving his lips. “What makes you sure that I am a voyageur? You don’t know me.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You can be anything you like. But I’ve got eyes. You gave yourself away the minute you walked in.”
He said something under his breath. “How?”
“Don’t let it worry you. I doubt if anyone else noticed. But I see things other people don’t see.” I handed him my card, a little smugly perhaps. There is only one Lorenzo Smythe, the One-Man Stock Company. Yes, I’m “The Great Lorenzo.” Stereo, canned opera, legit “Pantomimist and Mimicry Artist Extraordinary.”
He read my card and dropped it into a sleeve pocket-which annoyed me; those cards had cost me money-genuine imitation hand engraving. “I see your point,” he said quietly, “but what was wrong with the way I behaved?”
“I’ll show you,” I said. “I’ll walk to the door like a ground hog and come back the way you walk. Watch.” I did so, making the trip back in a slightly exaggerated version of his walk to allow for his untrained eye-feet sliding softly along the floor as if it were deck plates, weight carried forward and balanced from the hips, hands a trifle forward and clear of the body, ready to grasp.
There are a dozen other details which can’t be set down in words; the point is you have to be a spaceman when you do it, with a spaceman’s alert body and unconscious balance-you have to live it. A city man blunders along on smooth floors all his life, steady floors with Earth-normal gravity, and will trip over a cigarette paper, like as not. Not so a spaceman.
“See what I mean?” I asked, slipping back into my seat.
“I’m afraid I do,” he admitted sourly. “Did I walk like that?”
“Yes.”
“Hum, Maybe I should take lessons from you.”
“You could do worse,” I admitted.
He sat there looking me over, then started to speak-changed his mind and wiggled a finger at the bartender to refill our glasses. When the drinks came, he paid for them, drank his, and slid out of his seat all in one smooth motion. “Wait for me,” he said quietly.
With a drink he had bought sitting in front of me I could not refuse. Nor did I want to; he interested me. I liked him, even on ten minutes’ acquaintance; he was the sort of big ugly handsome galoot that women go for and men take orders from.
He threaded his way gracefully through the room and passed a table of four Martians near the door. I didn’t like Martians. I did not fancy having a thing that looks like a tree trunk topped off by a sun helmet claiming the privileges of a man. I did not like the way they grew pseudo limbs; it reminded me of snakes crawling out of their holes. I did not like the fact that they could look all directions at once without turning their heads-if they had had heads, which of course they don’t. And I could not stand their smell!
Nobody could accuse me of race prejudice. I didn’t care what a man’s color, race, or religion was. But men were men, whereas Martians were things. They weren’t even animals to my way of thinking. I’d rather have had a wart hog around me any day. Permitting them in restaurants and bars used by men struck me as outrageous. But there was the Treaty, of course, so what could I do?
These four had not been there when I came in, or I would have whiffed them. For that matter, they certainly could not have been there a few moments earlier when I had walked to the door and back. Now there they were, standing on their pedestals around a table, pretending to be people. I had not even heard the air conditioning speed up.
The free drink in front of me did not attract me; I simply wanted my host to come back so that I could leave politely. It suddenly occurred to me that he had glanced over that way just before he had left so hastily and I wondered if the Martians had anything to do with it. I looked over at them, trying to see if they were paying attention to our table-but how could you tell what a Martian was looking at or what it was thinking? That was another thing I didn’t like about them.
I sat there for several minutes fiddling with my drink and wondering what had happened to my spaceman friend. I had hoped that his hospitality might extend to dinner and, if we became sufficiently simpatico, possibly even to a small temporary loan. My other prospects were, I admit it! Slender. The last two times I had tried to call my agent his auto secretary had simply recorded the message, and unless I deposited coins in the door, my room would not open to me that night , That was how low my fortunes had ebbed: reduced to sleeping in a coin operated cubicle.
In the midst of my melancholy ponderings a waiter touched me on the elbow. “Call for you, sir.”
“Eh? Very well, friend, will you fetch an instrument to the table?”
“Sorry, sir, but I can’t transfer it. Booth 12 in the lobby.”
“Oh. Thank you,” I answered, making it as warm as possible since I was unable to tip him. I swung wide around the Martians as I went Out.
I soon saw why the call had not been brought to the table; Number 12 was a maximum-security booth, sight, sound, and scramble. The tank showed no image and did not clear even after the door locked behind me. It remained milky until I sat down and placed my face within pickup, then the opalescent clouds melted away and I found myself looking at my spaceman friend.
“Sorry to walk out on you,” he said quickly, “but I was in a hurry. I want you to come at once to Room 2106 of the Eisenhower.”
He offered no explanation. The Eisenhower is just as unlikely a hotel for spacemen as Casa Manana. I could smell trouble. You don’t pick up a stranger in a bar and then insist that he come to a hotel room-well, not one of the same sex, at least.
“Why?” I asked.
The spaceman got that look peculiar to men who are used to being obeyed without question; I studied it with professional interest-it’s not the same as anger; it is more like a thundercloud just before a storm. Then he got himself in hand and answered quietly, “Lorenzo, there is no time to explain. Are you open to a job?”
“Do you mean a professional engagement?” I answered slowly. For a horrid instant I suspected that he was offering me, Well, you know-a job. Thus far I had kept my professional pride intact, despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
“Oh, professional, of course!” he answered quickly. “This requires the best actor we can get.”
I did not let my relief show in my face. It was true that I was ready for any professional work. I would gladly have played the balcony in Romeo and Juliet-but it does not do to be eager.
“What is the nature of the engagement?” I asked. “My calendar is rather full.”
He brushed it aside. “I can’t explain over the phone. Perhaps you don’t know it, but any scrambler circuit can be unscrambled, with the proper equipment. Shag over here fast!”
He was eager; therefore I could afford not to be eager. “Now really,” I protested, “what do you think I am? A bellman? Or an untried juvenile anxious for the privilege of carrying a spear? I am Lorenzo!” I threw up my chin and looked offended. “What is your offer?”
“Uh, Damn it, I can’t go into it over the phone. How much do you get?”
“Eh? You are asking my professional salary?”
“Yes, yes!”
“For a single appearance? Or by the week? Or an option contract?”
“Never mind. What do you get by the day?”
“My minimum fee for a one-evening date is one hundred Imperials.” This was simple truth. Oh, I have been coerced at times into paying some scandalous kickbacks, but the voucher never read less than my proper fee. A man has his standards. I’d rather starve.
“Very well,” he answered quickly, “one hundred Imperials in cash, laid in your hand the minute you show up here. But hurry!”
“Eh?” I realized with sudden dismay that I could as easily have said two hundred, or even two fifty. “But I have not agreed to accept the engagement.”
“Never mind that! We’ll talk it over when you get here. The hundred is yours even if you turn us down. If you accept-well, call it bonus, over and above your salary. Now will you sign off and get over here?”
I bowed. “Certainly, sir. Have patience.”
Fortunately the Eisenhower is not too far from the Casa, for I did not even have a minimum for tube fare. However, although the art of strolling is almost lost, I savor it-and it gave me time to collect my thoughts. I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter. I was not unduly fussy about legality qua legality; I agreed with the Bard that the Law is often an idiot. But in the main I had stayed on the right side of the Street.
But presently I realized that I had insufficient facts, so I put it out of my mind, threw my cape over my right shoulder, and strode along, enjoying the mild autumn weather and the rich and varied odors of the metropolis. On arrival I decided to forego the main entrance and took a bounce tube from the sub-basement to the twenty-first floor, I having at the time a vague feeling that this was not the place to let my public recognize me. My voyageur friend let me in. “You took long enough,” he snapped.
“Indeed?” I let it go at that and looked around me. It was an expensive suite, as I had expected, but it was littered and there were at least a dozen used glasses and as many coffee cups scattered here and there; it took no skill to see that I was merely the latest of many visitors. Sprawled on a couch, scowling at me, was another man, whom I tabbed tentatively as a spaceman. I glanced inquiringly but no introduction was offered.
“Well, you’re here, at least. Let’s get down to business.”
“Surely. Which brings to mind,” I added, “there was mention of a bonus, or retainer.”
“Oh, yes.” He turned to the man on the couch. “Jock, pay him.”
“For what?”
“Pay him!”
I now knew which one was boss-although, as I was to learn, there was usually little doubt when Dak Broadbent was in a room. The other fellow stood up quickly, still scowling, and counted Out to me a fifty and five tens. I tucked it away casually without checking it and said, “I am at your disposal, gentlemen.”
The big man chewed his lip. “First, I want your solemn oath not even to talk in your sleep about this job.”
“If my simple word is not good, is my oath better?” I glanced at the smaller man, slouched again on the couch. “I don’t believe we have met. I am Lorenzo.”
He glanced at me, looked away. My barroom acquaintance said hastily, “Names don’t matter in this.”
“No? Before my revered father died he made me promise him three things: first, never to mix whisky with anything but water; second, always to ignore anonymous letters; and lastly, never to talk with a stranger who refuses to give his name. Good day, sirs.” I turned toward the door, their hundred Imperials warm in my pocket.
“Hold it!” I paused. He went on, “You are perfectly right. My name is.”
“Skipper!”
“Stow it, Jock. I’m Dak Broadbent; that’s Jacques Dubois glaring at us. We’re both voyageurs-master pilots, all classes, any acceleration.”
I bowed. “Lorenzo Smythe,” I said modestly, “jongleur and artist-care of The Lambs Club.” I made a mental note to pay my dues.
“Good. Jock, try smiling for a change. Lorenzo, you agree to keep our business secret?”
“Under the rose. This is a discussion between gentlemen.”
“Whether you take the job or not?”
“Whether we reach agreement or not. I am human, but, short of illegal methods of questioning, your confidences are sale with me.”
“I am well aware of what neodexocaine will do to a man’s forebrain, Lorenzo. We don’t expect the impossible.”
“Dak,” Dubois said urgently, “this is a mistake. We should at least.”
“Shut up, Jock. I want no hypnotists around at this point. Lorenzo, we want you to do an impersonation job. It has to be so perfect that no one. I mean no one will ever know it took place. Can you do that sort of a job?”
I frowned. “The first question is not ‘Can I?’ but ‘Will I?’ What are the circumstances?”
“Uh, we’ll go into details later. Roughly, it is the ordinary doubling job for a well-known public figure. The difference is that the impersonation will have to be so perfect as to fool people who know him well and must see him close up. It won’t be just reviewing a parade from a grandstand, or pinning medals on girl scouts.” He looked at me shrewdly. “It will take a real artist.”
“No,” I said at once.
“Huh? You don’t know anything about the job yet. If your conscience is bothering you, let me assure you that you will not be working against the interests of the man you will impersonate nor against anyone’s legitimate interests. This is a job that really needs to be done.”
“No”
“Well, for Pete’s sake, why? You don’t even know how much we will pay.”
“Pay is no object,” I said firmly. “I am an actor, not a double.”
“I don’t understand you. There are lots of actors picking up spare money making public appearances for celebrities.”
“I regard them as prostitutes, not colleagues. Let me make myself clear. Does an author respect a ghost writer? Would you respect a painter who allowed another man to sign his work for money? Possibly the spirit of the artist is foreign to you, sir, yet perhaps I may put it in terms germane to your own profession. Would you, simply for money, be content to pilot a ship while some other man, not possessing your high art, wore the uniform, received the credit, was publicly acclaimed as the Master? Would you?”
Dubois snorted. “How much money?”
Broadbent frowned at him. “I think I understand your objection.”
“To the artist, sir, kudos comes first. Money is merely the mundane means whereby he is enabled to create his art.”
“Hum, All right, so you won’t do it just for money. Would you do it for other reasons? If you felt that it had to be done and you were the only one who could do it successfully?”
“I concede the possibility; I cannot imagine the circumstances.”
“You won’t have to imagine them; we’ll explain them to you.”
Dubois jumped up off the couch. “Now see here, Dak, you can’t.”
“Cut it, Jock! He has to know.”
“He doesn’t have to know now-and here. And you haven’t any right to jeopardize everybody else by telling him. You don’t know a thing about him.”
“It’s a calculated risk.” Broadbent turned back to me.
Dubois grabbed his arm, swung him around. “Calculated risk be damned! Dak, I’ve strung along with you in the past, but this time before I’ll let you shoot off your face, well, one or the other of us isn’t going to be in any shape to talk.”
Broadbent looked startled, then grinned coldly down at Dubois. “Think you’re up to it, Jock old son?”
Dubois glared up at him, did not flinch. Broadbent was a head taller and outweighed him by twenty kilos. I found myself for the first time liking Dubois; I am always touched by the gallant audacity of a kitten, the fighting heart of a bantam cock, or the willingness of a little mart to die in his tracks rather than knuckle under, And, while I did not expect Broadbent to kill him, I did think that I was about to see Dubois used as a dust rag.
I had no thought of interfering. Every man is entitled to elect the time and manner of his own destruction.
I could see tension grow. Then suddenly Broadbent laughed and clapped Dubois on the shoulder. “Good for you, Jock!” He turned to me and said quietly, “Will you excuse us a few moments? My friend and I must make heap big smoke.”
The suite was equipped with a hush corner, enclosing the autograph and the phone. Broadbent took Dubois by the arm and led him over there; they stood and talked urgently.
Sometimes such facilities in public places like hotels are not all that they might be; the sound waves fail to cancel out completely. But the Eisenhower is a luxury house and in this case, at least, the equipment worked perfectly; I could see their lips move but I could hear no sound.
But I could indeed see their lips move. Broadbent’s face was toward me and Dubois I could glimpse in a wall mirror. When I was performing in my famous mentalist act, I found out why my father had beaten my tail until I learned the silent language of lips, in my mentalist act I always performed in a brightly lighted hail and made use of spectacles which-but never mind; I could read lips.
Dubois was saying: “Dak, you bloody, stupid, unprintable, illegal and highly improbable obscenity, do you want us both to wind up counting rocks on Titan? This conceited pipsqueak will spill his guts.”
I almost missed Broadbent’s answer. Conceited indeed! Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.
Broadbent: “Doesn’t matter if the game is crooked when it’s the only game in town. Jock, there is nobody else we can use.”
Dubois: “All right, then get Doc Scortia over here, hypnotize him, and shoot him the happy juice. But don’t tell him the score, not until he’s conditioned, not while we are still on dirt.”
Broadbent: “Uh, Scortia himself told me that we could not depend on hypno and drugs, not for the performance we need.
We’ve got to have his co-operation, his intelligent co-operation.”
Dubois snorted. “What intelligence? Look at him. Ever see a rooster strutting through a barnyard? Sure, he’s the right size and shape and his skull looks a good bit like the Chief-but there is nothing behind it. He’ll lose his nerve, blow his top, and give the whole thing away. He can’t play the part-he’s just a ham actor!”
If the immortal Caruso had been charged with singing off key, he could not have been more affronted than I. But I trust I justified my claim to the mantle of Burbage and Booth at that moment; I went on buffing my nails and ignored it-merely noting that I would someday make friend Dubois both laugh and cry within the span of twenty seconds. I waited a few moments more, then stood up and approached the hush corner. When they saw that I intended to enter it, they both shut up. I said quietly, “Never mind, gentlemen, I have changed my mind.”
Dubois looked relieved. “You don’t want the job.”
“I mean that I accept the engagement. You need not make explanations. I have been assured by friend Broadbent that the work is such as not to trouble my conscience-and I trust him.
He has assured rue that he needs an actor. But the business affairs of the producer are not my concern. I accept.”
Dubois looked angry, but shut up. I expected Broadbent to look pleased and relieved; instead he looked worried. “All right,” he agreed, “let’s get on with it. Lorenzo, I don’t know exactly how long we will need you. No more than a few days, I’m certain-and you will be on display only an hour or so once or twice in that time.”
“That does not matter as long as I have time to study the role, the impersonation. But approximately how many days will you need me? I should notify my agent.”
“Oh no! Don’t do that.”
“Well-how long? As much as a week?”
“It will be less than that-or we’re sunk.”
“Never mind. Will a hundred Imperials a day suit you?”
I hesitated, recalling how easily he had met my minimum just to interview me-and decided this was a time to be gracious. I waved it aside. “Let’s not speak of such things. No doubt you will present me with an honorarium consonant with the worth of my performance.”
“All right, all right.” Broadbent turned away impatiently. “Jock, call the field. Then call Langston and tell him we’re starting Plan Mardi Gras. Synchronize with him. Lorenzo,” He motioned for me to follow and strode into the bath. He opened a small case and demanded, “Can you do anything with this junk?”
“Junk” it was-the sort of overpriced and unprofessional makeup kit that is sold over the counter to stage-struck youngsters. I stared at it with mild disgust. “Do I understand, sir, that you expect me to start an impersonation now? Without time for study?”
“Huh? No, no, no! I want you to change your face-on the outside chance that someone might recognize you as we leave here.
That’s possible, isn’t it?”
I answered stiffly that being recognized in public was a burden that all celebrities were forced to carry. I did not add that it was certain that countless people would recognize The Great Lorenzo in any public place.
“Okay. So change your phiz so it’s not yours.” He left abruptly.
I sighed and looked over the child’s toys he had handed me, no doubt thinking they were the working tools of my profession, grease paints suitable for clowns, reeking spirit gum, crepe hair which seemed to have been raveled from Aunt Maggie’s parlor carpet. Not an ounce of Silicoflesh, no electric brushes, no modern amenities of any sort. But a true artist can do wonders with a burnt match, or oddments such as one might find in a kitchen, and his own genius. I arranged the lights and let myself fall into creative reverie.
There are several ways to keep a well-known face from being recognized. The simplest is misdirection. Place a man in uniform and his face is not likely to be noticed-do you recall the face of the last policeman you encountered? Could you identify him if you saw him next in mufti? On the same principle is the attention getting special feature. Equip a man with an enormous nose, disfigured perhaps with acne rosacea; the vulgar will stare in fascination at the nose itself, the polite will turn away-but neither will see the face.
I decided against this primitive maneuver because I judged that my employer wished me not to be noticed at all rather than remembered for an odd feature without being recognized.
This is much more difficult; anyone can be conspicuous but it takes real skill not to be noticed. I needed a face as commonplace, as impossible to remember as the true face of the immortal Alec Guinness. Unfortunately my aristocratic features are entirely too distinguished, too handsome-a regrettable handicap for a character actor. As my father used to say, “Larry, you are too damned pretty! If you don’t get off your lazy duff and learn the business, you are going to spend fifteen years as a juvenile, under the mistaken impression that you are an actor-then wind up selling candy in the lobby. ‘Stupid’ and ‘pretty’ are the two worst vices in show business-and you’re both.”
Then he would take off his belt and stimulate my brain. Father was a practical psychologist and believed that warming the glutei maximi with a strap drew excess blood away from a boy’s brain. While the theory may have been shaky, the results justified the method; by the time I was fifteen I could stand on my head on a slack wire and quote page after page of Shakespeare and Shaw-or steal a scene simply by lighting a cigarette.
I was deep in the mood of creation when Broadbent stuck his face in. “Good grief!” he snapped. “Haven’t you done anything yet?”
I stared coldly. “I assumed that you wanted my best creative work-which cannot be hurried. Would you expect a cordon bleu to compound a new sauce on the back of a galloping horse?”
“Horses be damned!” He glanced at his watch finger. “You have six more minutes. If you can’t do anything in that length of time, we’ll just have to take our chances.”
Well! Of course I prefer to have plenty of time-but I had understudied my father in his quick-change creation, The Assassination of Huey Long, fifteen parts in seven minutes-and had once played it in nine seconds less time than he did. “Stay where you are!” I snapped back at him. “I’ll be with you at once.” I then put on “Benny Grey,” the colorless handy man who does the murders in The House with No Doors-two quick strokes to put dispirited lines into my cheeks from nose to mouth corners, a mere suggestion of bags under my eyes, and Factor’s Number five sallow over all, taking not more than twenty seconds for everything. I could have done it in my sleep; House ran on boards for ninety-two performances before they recorded it.
Then I faced Broadbent and he gasped. “Good God! I don’t believe it.”
I stayed in “Benny Grey” and did not smile acknowledgment. What Broadbent could not realize was that the grease paint really was not necessary. It makes it easier, of course, but I had used a touch of it primarily because he expected it; being one of the yokels, he naturally assumed that make-up consisted of paint and powder.
He continued to stare at me. “Look here,” he said in a hushed voice, “could you do something like that for me? In a hurry?”
I was about to say no when I realized that it presented an interesting professional challenge, I had been tempted to say that if my father had started in on him at five he might be ready now to sell cotton candy at a punkin’ doin’s, but I thought better of it. “You simply want to be sure that you will not be recognized?” I asked.
“Yes, yes! Can you paint me up, or give me a false nose, or something?”
I shook my head. “No matter what we did with make-up, it would simply make you look like a child dressed up for Trick or Treat. You can’t act and you can never learn, at your age. We won’t touch your face.”
“Huh? But with this beak on me.”
“Attend me. Anything I could do to that lordly nose would just call attention to it, I assure you. Would it suffice if an acquaintance looked at you and said, ‘Say, that big fellow reminds me of Dak Broadbent. It’s not Dak, of course, but looks a little like him.’ Eh?”
“Huh? I suppose so. As long as he was sure it wasn’t me. I’m supposed to be on, Well, I’m not supposed to be on Earth just now.”
“He’ll be quite sure it is not you, because we’ll change your walk. That’s the most distinctive thing about you. If your walk is wrong, it cannot possibly be you-so it must be some other big boned, broad-shouldered man who looks a bit like you.”
“Okay, show me how to walk.”
“No, you could never learn it. I’ll force you to walk the way I want you to.”
“How?”

“We’ll put a handful of pebbles or the equivalent in the toes of your boots. That will force you back on your heels and make you stand up straight. It will be impossible for you to sneak along in that cat footed spaceman’s crouch. Maybe slap some tape across your shoulder blades to remind you to keep your shoulders back, too. That will do it.”
“You think they won’t recognize me just because I’ll walk differently?”
“Certain. An acquaintance won’t know why he is sure it is not you, but the very fact that the conviction is subconscious and unanalyzed will put it beyond reach of doubt. Oh, I’ll do a little something to your face, just to make you feel easier-but it isn’t necessary.”
We went back into the living room of the suite. I was still being “Benny Grey” of course; once I put on a role it takes a conscious effort of will to go back to being myself. Dubois was busy at the phone; he looked up, saw me, and his jaw dropped. He hurried out of the hush locus and demanded, “Who’s he? And where’s that actor fellow?” After his first glance at me, he had looked away and not bothered to look back, “Benny Grey” is such a tired, negligible little guy that there is no point in looking at him.
“What actor fellow?” I answered in Benny’s flat, colorless tones. It brought Dubois’ eyes back to me. He looked at me, started to look away, his eyes snapped back, then he looked at my clothes. Broadbent guffawed and clapped him on the shoulder.
“And you said he couldn’t act!” He added sharply, “Did you get them all, Jock?”
“Yes.” Dubois looked back at me, looked perplexed, and looked away.
“Okay. We’ve got to be out of here in four minutes. Let’s see how fast you can get me fixed up, Lorenzo.”
Dak had one boot off, his blouse off, and his chemise pulled up so that I could tape his shoulders when the light over the door came on and the buzzer sounded. He froze. “Jock? We expecting anybody?”
“Probably Langston. He said he was going to try to get over here before we left.” Dubois started for the door.
“It might not be him. It might be.” I did not get to hear Broadbent say who he thought it might be as Dubois dilated the door. Framed in the doorway, looking like a nightmare toadstool, was a Martian.
For an agony-stretched second I could see nothing but the Martian. I did not see the human standing behind him, nor did I notice the life wand tile Martian cradled in his pseudo limb.
Then the Martian flowed inside, the man with him stepped in behind him, and the door relaxed. The Martian squeaked, “Good afternoon, gentlemen. Going somewhere?”
I was frozen, dazed, by acute xenophobia. Dak was handicapped by disarranged clothing. But little Jock Dubois acted with a simple heroism that made him my beloved brother even as he died, He flung himself at that life wand. Right at it-he made no attempt to evade it.
He must have been dead, a hole burned through his belly you could poke a fist through, before he hit the floor. But he hung on and the pseudo limb stretched like taffy-then snapped, broken off a few inches from the monster’s neck, and poor Jock still had the life wand cradled in his dead arms.
The human who had followed that stinking, reeking thing into the room had to step to one side before he could get in a shot and he made a mistake. He should have shot Dak first, then me. Instead he wasted his first one on Jock and he never got a second one, as Dak shot him neatly in the face. I had not even known Dak was armed.
Deprived of his weapon, the Martian did not attempt to escape. Dak bounced to his feet, slid up to him, and said, “Ah, Rrringriil. I see you.”
“I see you, Captain Dak Broadbent,” the Martian squeaked, then added, “you will tell my nest?”
“I will tell your nest, Rrringriil.”
“I thank you, Captain Dak Broadbent.”
Dak reached out a long bony finger and poked it into the eye nearest him, shoving it on home until his knuckles were jammed against the brain case. He pulled it out and his finger was slimed with green ichor. The creature’s pseudo limbs crawled back into its trunk in reflex spasm but the dead thing continued to stand firm on its base. Dak hurried into the bath; I heard him washing his hands. I stayed where I was, almost as frozen by shock as the late Rrringriil.
Dak came out, wiping his hands on his shirt, and said, “We’ll have to clean this up. There isn’t much time.” He could have been speaking of a spilled drink.
I tried to make clear in one jumbled sentence that I wanted no part of it, that we ought to call the cops, that I wanted to get away from there before the cops came, that he knew what he could do with his crazy impersonation job, and that I planned to sprout wings and fly out the window, flak brushed it all aside. “Don’t jitter, Lorenzo. We’re on minus minutes now. Help me get the bodies into the bathroom.”
“Huh? Good God, man! Let’s just lock up and run for it. Maybe they will never connect us with it.”
“Probably they wouldn’t,” he agreed, “since neither one of us is supposed to be here. But they would be able to see that Rrringriil had killed Jock-and we can’t have that. Not now we can’t.”
“Huh?”
“We can’t afford a news story about a Martian killing a human. So shut up and help me.”
I shut up and helped him. It steadied me to recall that “Benny Grey” had been the worst of sadistic psychopaths, who had enjoyed dismembering his victims. I let “Benny Grey” drag the two human bodies into the bath while Dak took the life wand and sliced Rrringriil into pieces small enough to handle. He was careful to make the first cut below the brain case so the job was not messy, but I could not help him with it, it seemed to me that a dead Martian stank even worse than a live one.
The oubliette was concealed in a panel in the bath just beyond the bidet; if it had not been marked with the usual radiation trefoil it would have been hard to find. After we had shoved the chunks of Rrringriil down it (I managed to get my spunk up enough to help), Dak tackled the messier problem of butchering and draining the human corpses, using the wand and, of course, working in the bath tub.
It is amazing how much blood a man holds. We kept the water running the whole time; nevertheless, it was bad. But when Dak had to tackle the remains of poor little Jock, he just wasn’t up to it. His eyes flooded with tears, blinding him, so I elbowed him aside before he sliced off his own fingers and let “Benny Grey” take over.
When I had finished and there was nothing left to show that there had ever been two other men and a monster in the suite, I sluiced out the tub carefully and stood up. Dak was in the doorway, looking as calm as ever. “I’ve made sure the floor is tidy,” he announced. “I suppose a criminologist with proper equipment could reconstruct it-but we are counting on no one ever suspecting. So let’s get out of here. We’ve got to gain almost twelve minutes somehow. Come on!”
I was beyond asking where or why. “All right. Let’s fix your boots.”
He shook his head. “It would slow me up. Right now speed is more essential than not being recognized.”
“I am in your hands.” I followed him to the door; he stopped and said, “There may be others around. If so, shoot first-there’s nothing else you can do.” He had the life wand in his hand, with his cloak drawn over it.
“Martians?”
“Or men. Or both.”
“Dak? Was Rrringriil one of those four at the Manana bar?”
“Certainly. Why do you think I went around Robinson’s barn to get you out of there and over here? They either tailed you, as we did, or they tailed me. Didn’t you recognize him?”
“Heavens, no! Those monsters all look alike to me.”
“And they say we all look alike. The four were Rrringriil, his conjugate-brother Rrringlath, and two others from his nest, of divergent lines. But shut up. If you see a Martian, shoot. You have the other gun?”
“Uh, yes. Look, Dak, I don’t know what this is all about. But as long as those beasts are against you, I’m with you. I despise Martians.”
He looked shocked. “You don’t know what you are saying. We’re not fighting Martians; those four are renegades.”
“Huh?”
“There are lots of good Martians-almost all of them. Shucks, even Rrringriil wasn’t a bad sort in most ways-I’ve had many a fine chess game with him.”
“What? In that case, I’m.”
“Stow it. You’re in too deep to back out. Now quick-march, straight to the bounce tube. I’ll cover our rear.”
I shut up. I was in much too deep-that was unarguable.
We hit the sub-basement and went at once to the express tubes. A two-passenger capsule was just emptying; Dak shoved me in so quickly that I did not see him set the control combination. But I was hardly surprised when the pressure let up from my chest and I saw the sign blinking: JEFFERSON SKYPORT. ALL OUT.
Nor did I care what station it was as long as it was as far as possible from Hotel Eisenhower. The few minutes we had been crammed in the vactube had been long enough for me to devise a plan-sketchy, tentative, and subject to change without notice, as the fine print always says, but a plan. It could be stated in two words: Get lost!
Only that morning I would have found the plan very difficult to execute; in our culture a man with no money at all is baby-helpless. But with a hundred slugs in my pocket I could go far and fast. I felt no obligation to Dak Broadbent. For reasons of his own, not my reasons! He had almost got me killed, then had crowded me into covering up a crime, made rue a fugitive from justice. But we had evaded the police, temporarily at least, and now, simply by shaking off Broadbent, I could forget the whole thing, shelve it as a bad dream. It seemed most unlikely that I could be connected with the affair even if it were discovered-fortunately a gentleman always wears gloves, and I had had mine off only to put on makeup and later during that ghastly house cleaning.
Aside from the warm burst of adolescent heroics I had felt when I thought Dak was fighting Martians I had no interest in his schemes-and even that sympathy had shut off when I found that he liked Martians in general. His impersonation job I would not now touch with the proverbial eleven-foot pole. To hell with Broadbent! All I wanted out of life was money enough to keep body and soul together and a chance to practice my art; cops-androbbers nonsense did not interest me-poor theater at best.
Jefferson Port seemed handmade to carry out my scheme. Crowded and confused, with express tubes spiderwebbing from it, in it, if Dak took his eyes off me for half a second I would be halfway to Omaha. I would lie low a few weeks, then get in touch with my agent and find out if any inquiries had been made about me.
Dak saw to it that we climbed out of the capsule together, else I would have slammed it shut and gone elsewhere at once. I pretended not to notice and stuck close as a puppy to him as we went up the belt to the main hall just under the surface, coming out between the Pan-Am desk and American Skylines. Dak straight across the waiting-room floor toward Diana, Ltd.,
and I surmised that he was going to buy tickets for the Moon shuttle, how he planned to get me aboard without passport or vaccination certificate I could not guess but I knew that be was resourceful. I decided that I would fade into the furniture while he bad his wallet out; when a man counts money there are at least a few seconds when his eyes and attention are fully occupied.
But we went right on past the Diana desk and through an archway marked Private Berths. The passageway beyond was not crowded and the walls were blank; I realized with dismay that I had let slip my best chance, back there in the busy main hail. I held back. “Dak? Are we making a jump?”
“Of course.”
“Dak, you’re crazy. I’ve got no papers, I don’t even have a tourist card for the Moon.”
“You won’t need them.”
“Huh? They’ll stop me at ‘Emigration.’ Then a big, beefy cop will start asking questions.”
A hand about the size of a cat closed on my upper arm. “Let’s not waste time. Why should you go through ‘Emigration,’ when officially you aren’t leaving? And why should I, when officially I never arrived? Quick-march, old son.”
I am well muscled and not small, but I felt as if a traffic robot were pulling me out of a danger zone. I saw a sign reading MEN and I made a desperate attempt to break it up. “Dak, half a minute, please. Got to see a man about the plumbing.”
He grinned at me. “Oh, yes? You went just before we left the hotel.” He did not slow up or let go of me.
“Kidney trouble.”
“Lorenzo old son, I smell a case of cold feet. Tell you what I’ll do. See that cop up ahead?” At the end of the corridor, in the private berths station, a defender of the peace was resting his big feet by leaning over a counter. “I find I have a sudden attack of conscience. I feel a need to confess-about how you killed a visiting Martian and two local citizens-about how you held a gun on me and forced me to help you dispose of the bodies. About.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Almost out of my mind with anguish and remorse, shipmate.”
“But-you’ve got nothing on me.”
“So? I think my story will sound more convincing than yours. I know what it is all about and you don’t. I know all about you and you know nothing about me. For example he mentioned a couple of details in my past that I would have sworn were buried and forgotten. All right, so I did have a couple of routines useful for stag shows that are not for the family trade-a man has to eat. But that matter about Bebe; that was hardly fair, for I certainly had not known that she was underage. As for that hotel bill, while it is true that bilking an “innkeeper” in Miami Beach carries much the same punishment as armed robbery elsewhere, it is a very provincial attitude-I would have paid if I had had the money. As for that unfortunate incident in Seattle-well, what I am trying to say is that Dak did know an amazing amount about my background but he had the wrong slant on most of it. Still.
“So,” he continued, “let’s walk right up to yon gendarme and make a clean breast of it. I’ll lay you seven to two as to which one of us is out on bail first.”
So we marched up to the cop and on past him. He was talking to a female clerk back of the railing and neither one of them looked up. Dak took out two tickets reading:
GATE PASS. MAINTENANCE PERMIT. Berth K-l27, and stuck them into the monitor. The machine scanned them, a transparency directed us to take an upper-level car, code King 127; the gate let us through and locked behind us as a recorded voice said, “Watch your step, please, and heed radiation warnings. The Terminal Company is not responsible for accidents beyond the gate.”
Dak punched an entirely different code in the little car; it wheeled around, picked a track, and we took off out under the field. It did not matter to me. I was beyond caring.
When we stepped out of the little car it went back where it came from. In front of me was a ladder disappearing into the steel ceiling above. Dak nudged me. “Up you go.” There was a scuttle hole at the top and on it a sign: RADIATION HAZARD-Optimax 13 Seconds. The figures had been chalked in. I stopped. I have no special interest in offspring but I am no fool. Dak grinned and said, “Got your lead britches on? Open it, go through at once and straight up the ladder into the ship. If you don’t stop to scratch, you’ll make it with at least three seconds to spare.”
I believe I made it with five seconds to spare. I was out in the sunlight for about ten feet, then I was inside a long tube in the ship. I used about every third rung.
The rocket ship was apparently small. At least the control room was quite cramped; I never got a look at the outside. The only other spaceships I had ever been in were the Moon shuttles Evangeline and her sister ship the Gabriel, that being the year in which I had incautiously accepted a lunar engagement on a co-op basis-our impresario had had a notion that a juggling, tightrope, and acrobatic routine would go well in the one-sixth gee of the Moon, which was correct as far as it went, but he had not allowed rehearsal time for us to get used to low gravity. I had to take advantage of the Distressed Travelers Act to get back and I had lost my wardrobe.
There were two men in the control room; one was lying in one of three acceleration couches fiddling with dials, the other was making obscure motions with a screw driver. The one in the couch glanced at me, said nothing. The other one turned, looked worried, then said past me, “What happened to Jock?”
Dak almost levitated out of the hatch behind me. “No time!” he snapped. “Have you compensated for his mass?”
“Red, is she taped? Tower?”
The man in the couch answered lazily, “I’ve been recomputing every two minutes. You’re clear with the tower. Minus forty-, uh, seven seconds.”
“Out of that bunk! Scram! I’m going to catch that tick!”
Red moved lazily out of the couch as Dak got in. The other man shoved me into the copilot’s couch and strapped a safety belt across my chest. He turned and dropped down the escape tube. Red followed him, then stopped with his head and shoulders out. “Tickets, please!” he said cheerfully.
“Oh, cripes!” Dak loosened a safety belt, reached for a pocket, got out the two field passes we had used to sneak aboard, and shoved them at him.
“Thanks,” Red answered. “See you in church. Hot jets, and so forth.” He disappeared with leisurely swiftness; I heard the air lock close and my eardrums popped. Dak did not answer his farewell; his eyes were busy on the computer dials and he made some minor adjustment.
“Twenty-one seconds,” he said to me. “There’ll be no rundown. Be sure your arms are inside and that you are relaxed. The first step is going to be a honey.”
I did as I was told, then waited for hours in that curtain-going-up tension. Finally I said, “Dak?”
“Shut up!”
“Just one thing: where are we going?”
“Mars.” I saw his thumb jab at a red button and I blacked out.

Chapter Two.
What is so funny about a man being dropsick? Those dolts with cast-iron stomachs always laugh-I’ll bet they would laugh if Grandma broke both legs.
I was spacesick, of course, as soon as the rocket ship quit blasting and went into free fall. I came out of it fairly quickly as my stomach was practically empty-I’d eaten nothing since breakfast, and was simply wanly miserable the remaining eternity of that awful trip. It took us an hour and forty-three minutes to make rendezvous, which is roughly equal to a thousand years in purgatory to a ground hog like myself.
I’ll say this for Dak, though: he did not laugh. Dak was a professional and he treated my normal reaction with the impersonal good manners of a ifight nurse-not like those flat-headed, loudvoiced jackasses you’ll find on the passenger list of a Moon shuttle. If I had my way, those healthy self-panickers would be spaced in mid-orbit and allowed to laugh themselves to death in vacuum.
Despite the turmoil in my mind and the thousand questions I wanted to ask we had almost made rendezvous with a torchship, which was in parking orbit around Earth, before I could stir up interest in anything. I suspect that if one were to inform a victim of spacesickness that he was to be shot at sunrise his own answer would be, “Yes? Would you hand me that sack, please?”
But I finally recovered to the point where instead of wanting very badly to die the scale had tipped so that I had a flickering, halfhearted interest in continuing to live. Dak was busy most of the time at the ship’s communicator, apparently talking on a very tight beam for his hands constantly nursed the directional control like a gunner laying a gun under difficulties. I could not hear what he said, or even read his lips, as he had his face pushed into the nimble box. I assumed that he was talking to the long-jump ship we were to meet.
But when he pushed the communicator aside and lit a cigarette I repressed the stomach retch that the mere sight of tobacco smoke had inspired and said, “Dak, isn’t it about time you told me the score?”
“Plenty of time for that on our way to Mars.”
“Huh? Damn your arrogant ways,” I protested feebly. “I don’t want to go to Mars. I would never have considered your crazy offer if I had known it was on Mars.”
“Suit yourself. You don’t have to go.”
“Eh?”
“The air lock is right behind you. Get out and walk. Mind you close the door.”
I did not answer the ridiculous suggestion. He went on, “But if you can’t breathe space the easiest thing to do is to go to Mars, and I’ll see that you get back. The Can Do-that’s this bucket-is about to rendezvous with the Go For Broke, which is a high-gee torchship. About seventeen seconds and a gnat’s wink after we make contact the Go For Broke will torch for Mars-for we’ve got to be there by Wednesday.”
I answered with the petulant stubbornness of a sick man. “I’m not going to Mars. I’m going to stay right in this ship. Somebody has to take it back and land it on Earth. You can’t fool me.”
“True,” Broadbent agreed. “But you won’t be in it. The three blokes who are supposed to be in this ship-according to the records back at Jefferson Field-are in the Go For Broke right now.
This is a three-man ship, as you’ve noticed. I’m afraid you will find them stuffy about giving up a place to you. And besides, how would you get back through ‘Immigration’?”
“I don’t care! I’d be back on ground.”
“And in jail, charged with everything from illegal entry to mopery and dopery in the spaceways. At the very least they would be sure that you were smuggling and they would take you to some quiet back room and run a needle in past your eyeball and find out just what you were up to. They would know what questions to ask and you wouldn’t be able to keep from answering. But you wouldn’t be able to implicate me, for good old Dak Broadhent hasn’t been back to Earth in quite a spell and has unimpeachable witnesses to prove it.”
I thought about it sickly, both from fear and the continuing effects of spacesickness. “So you would tip off the police? You dirty, slimy.” I broke off for lack of an adequately insulting noun.
“Oh no! Look, old son, I might twist your arm a bit and let you think that I would cry copper-but I never would. But Rrringriil’s conjugate-brother Rrringlath certainly knows that old ‘Grill’ went in that door and failed to come out. He will tip off the noises. Conjugate-brother is a relationship so close that we will never understand it, since we don’t reproduce by fission.”
I didn’t care whether Martians reproduced like rabbits or the stork brought them in a little black bag. The way he told it I could never go back to Earth, and I said so. He shook his head.
“Not at all. Leave it to me and we will slide you back in as neatly as we slid you out. Eventually you will walk off that field or some other field with a gate pass which shows that you are a mechanic who has been making some last-minute adjustment-and you’ll have greasy coveralls and a tool kit to back it up. Surely an actor of your skill can play the part of a mechanic for a few minutes?”
“Eh? Why, certainly! But.”
“There you are! You stick with ol’ Doc Dak; he’ll take care of you. We shuffled eight guild brothers in this current caper to get me on Earth and both of us off; we can do it again. But you would not stand a chance without voyageurs to help you.” He grinned. “Every voyageur is a free trader at heart. The art of smuggling being what it is, we are all of us always ready to help out one another in a little innocent deception of the port guards. But a person outside the lodge does not ordinarily get such co-operation.”
I tried to steady my stomach and think about it. “Dak, is this a smuggling deal? Because.“
“Oh no! Except that we are smuggling you.”
“I was going to say that I don’t regard smuggling as a crime.”
“Who does? Except those who make money off the rest of us by limiting trade. But this is a straight impersonation job, Lorenzo, and you are the man for it. It wasn’t an accident that I ran across you in the bar; there had been a tail on you for two days. As soon as I hit dirt I went where you were.” He frowned. “I wish I could be sure our honorable antagonists had been following me, and not you.”
“Why?”
“If they were following me they were trying to find out what I was after-which is okay, as the lines were already drawn; we knew we were mutual enemies. But if they were following you, then they knew what I was after-an actor who could play the role.”
“But how could they know that? Unless you told them?”
“Lorenzo, this thing is big, much bigger than you imagine. I don’t see it all myself-and the less you know about it until you must, the better off you are. But I can tell you this: a set of personal characteristics was fed into the big computer at the System Census Bureau at The Hague and the machine compared them with the personal characteristics of every male professional actor alive. It was done as discreetly as possible but somebody might have guessed-and talked. The specifications amounted to identification both of the principal and the actor who could double for him, since the job had to be perfect.”
“Oh. And the machine told you that I was the man for it?”
“Yes. You-and one other.”
This was another good place for me to keep my mouth shut. But I could not have done so if my life had depended on it-which in a way it did. I just had to know who the other actor was who was considered competent to play a role which called for my unique talents. “This other one? Who is he?”
Dak looked me over; I could see him hesitate. “Hum-fellow by the name of Orson Trowbridge. Know him?”
“That ham!” For a moment I was so furious that I forgot my nausea.
“So? I hear that he is a very good actor.”
I simply could not help being indignant at the idea that anyone should even think about that oaf Trowbridge for a role for which I was being considered. “That arm-waver! That wordmouther!”
I stopped, realizing that it was more dignified to ignore such colleagues-if the word fits. But that popinjay was so conceited that, well, if the role called for him to kiss a lady’s hand, Trowbridge would fake it by kissing his own thumb instead. A narcissist, a poseur, a double fake-how could such a man live a role?
Yet such is the injustice of fortune that his sawings and rantings had paid him well while real artists went hungry.
“Dak, I simply cannot see why you considered him for it.”
“Well, we didn’t want him; he is tied up with some long-term contract that would make his absence conspicuous and awkward. It was lucky for us that you were-uh, ‘at liberty.’ As soon as you agreed to the job I had Jock send word to call off the team that was trying to arrange a deal with Trowbridge.”
“I should think so!”
“But-see here, Lorenzo, I’m going to lay it on the line. While you were busy whooping your cookies after Brennschluss I called the Go For Broke and told them to pass the word down to get busy on Trowbridge again.”
“What?”
“You asked for it, shipmate. See here, a man in my racket contracts to herd a heap to Ganymede, that means he will pilot that pot to Ganymede or die trying. He doesn’t get fainthearted and try to welsh while the ship is being loaded. You told me you would take this job-no ‘ifs’ or ‘ands’ or ‘buts’-you took the job. A few minutes later there is a fracas; you lose your nerve.
Later you try to run out on me at the field. Only ten minutes ago you were screaming to be taken back dirtside. Maybe you are a better actor than Trowbridge. I wouldn’t know. But I know we need a man who can be depended on not to lose his nerve when the time comes. I understand that Trowbridge is that sort of bloke. So if we can get him, we’ll use him instead, pay you off and tell you nothing and ship you back. Understand?”
Too well I understood. Dak did not use the word-I doubt if he would have understood it-but he was telling me that I was not a trouper. The bitter part about it was that he was justified. I could not be angry; I could only be ashamed. I had been an idiot to accept the contract without knowing more about it-but I had agreed to play the role, without conditions or escape clauses. Now I was trying to back out, like a rank amateur with stage fright.
“The show must go on” is the oldest tenet of show business. Perhaps it has no philosophical verity, but the things men live by are rarely subject to logical proof. My father had believed it-I had seen him play two acts with a burst appendix and then take his bows before he had let them rush him to a hospital. I could see his face now, looking at me with the contempt of a trouper for a so-called actor who would let an audience down.
“Dak,” I said humbly, “I am very sorry. I was wrong.”
He looked at me sharply. “You’ll do the job?”
“Yes.” I meant it sincerely. Then I suddenly remembered a factor which could make the part as impossible for me as the role of Snow White in The Seven Dwarfs. “That is-well, I want to. But.”
“But what?” he said scornfully. “More of your damned temperament?”
“No, no! But you said we were going to Mars. Dak, am I going to be expected to do this impersonation with Martians around me?”
“Eh? Of course. How else on Mars?”
“Uh, But, Dak, I can’t stand Martians! They give me the heebie jeebies. I wouldn’t want to-I would try not to-but I might fall right out of the characterization.”
“Oh. If that is all that is worrying you, forget it.”
“Huh? But I can’t forget it. I can’t help it. I.”
“I said, ‘Forget it.’ Old son, we knew you were a peasant in such matters-we know all about you. Lorenzo, your fear of Martians is as childish and irrational as a fear of spiders or snakes.
But we had anticipated it and it will be taken care of. So forget it.”
“Well-all right.” I was not much reassured, but he had flicked me where it hurt. “Peasant”, why, “peasants” were the audience! So I shut up.
Dak pulled the communicator to him, did not bother to silence his message with the rumble box: “Dandelion to Tumbleweed, cancel Plan Inkblot. We will complete Mardi Gras.”
“Dak?” I said as he signed off.
“Later,” he answered. “I’m about to match orbits. The contact may be a little rough, as I am not going to waste time worrying about chuck holes. So pipe down and hang on.”
And it was rough. By the time we were in the torchship I was glad to be comfortably back in free fall again; surge nausea is even worse than everyday dropsickness. But we did not stay in free fall more than five minutes; the three men who were to go back in the Can Do were crowding into the transfer lock even as Dak and I floated into the torchship. The next few moments were extremely confused. I suppose I am a ground hog at heart for I disorient very easily when I can’t tell the floor from the ceiling. Someone called out, “Where is he?” Dak replied,
“Here)” The same voice replied, “Him?” as if he could not believe his eyes.
“Yes, yes!” Dak answered. “He’s got make-up on. Never mind, it’s all right. Help me get him into the cider press.”
A hand grabbed my arm, towed me along a narrow passage and into a compartment. Against one bulkhead and flat to it were two bunks, or “cider presses,” the bathtub-shaped, hydraulic, pressure-distribution tanks used for high acceleration in torchships. I had never seen one before but we had used quite convincing mock-up’s in the space opus The Earth Raiders.
There was a stenciled sign on the bulkhead behind the bunks:
WARRING!!! Do Not Take More than Three Gravities without a Gee Suit. By Order of, I rotated slowly out of range of vision before I could finish reading it and someone shoved me into one cider press. Dak and the other men were hurriedly strapping me against it when a horn somewhere near by broke into a horrid hooting. It continued for several seconds, then a voice replaced it: “Red warning! Two gravities! Three minutes! Red warning! Two gravities! Three minutes!” Then the hooting started again.
Through the racket I heard Dak ask urgently, “Is the projector all set? The tapes ready?”
“Sure, sure!”
“Got the hypo?” Dak squirmed around in the air and said to me, “Look, shipmate, we’re going to give you a shot. It’s all right. Part of it is Nullgrav, the rest is a stimulant-for you are going to have to stay awake and study your lines. It will make your eyeballs feel hot at first and it may make you itch, but it won’t hurt you.”
“Wait, Dak, I.”
“No time! I’ve got to smoke this scrap heap!” He twisted and was out the door before I could protest. The second man pushed up my left sleeve, held an injection gun against the skin, and I had received the dose before I knew it. Then he was gone. The hooting gave way to: “Red waning! Two gravities! Two minutes!”
I tried to look around but the drug made me even more confused. My eyeballs did feel hot and my teeth as well and I began to feel an almost intolerable itching along my spine-but the safety straps kept me from reaching the tortured area-and perhaps kept me from breaking an arm at acceleration. The hooting stopped again and this time Dak’s self-confident baritone boomed out, “Last red warning! Two gravities! One minute! Knock off those pinochle games and spread your fat carcasses-we’re goin’ to smoke!” The hooting was replaced this time by a recording of Arkezian’s Ad Astra, opus 61 in C major. It was the controversial London Symphony version with the 14-cycle “scare” notes buried in the timpani. Battered, bewildered, and doped as I was, they seemed to have no effect on me-you can’t wet a river.
A mermaid came in the door. No scaly tail, surely, but a mermaid is what she looked like. When my eyes refocused I saw that it was a very likely looking and adequately mammalian young woman in singlet and shorts, swimming along head first in a way that made clear that free fall was no novelty to her. She glanced at me without smiling, placed herself against the other cider press, and took hold of the hand grips-she did not bother with safety belts. The music hit the rolling finale and I felt myself grow very heavy.
Two gravities is not bad, not when you are floating in a liquid bed. The skin over the top of the cider press pushed up around me, supporting me inch by inch; I simply felt heavy and found it hard to breathe. You hear these stories about pilots torching at ten gravities and ruining themselves and I have no doubt that they are true-but two gravities, taken in the cider press, simply makes one feel languid, unable to move.
It was some time before I realized that the horn in the ceiling was speaking to me. “Lorenzo! How are you doing, shipmate?”
“All right.” The effort made me gasp. “How long do we have to put up with this?”
“About two days.”
I must have moaned, for Dak laughed at me. “Quit belly aching, chum! My first trip to Mars took thirty-seven weeks, every minute of it free fall in an elliptical orbit. You’re taking the luxury route, at a mere double gee for a couple of days-with a one-gee rest at turnover, I might add. We ought to charge you for it.”
I started to tell him what I thought of his humor in scathing green-room idiom, then recalled that there was a lady present. My father had taught me that a woman will forgive any action, up to and including assault with violence, but is easily insulted by language; the lovelier half of our race is symbol-oriented, very strange, in view of their extreme practicality. In any case, I have never let a taboo word pass my lips when it might offend the ears of a lady since the time I last received the back of my father’s hard hand full on my mouth, Father could have given Professor Pavlov pointers in reflex conditioning.
But Dak was speaking ag