Title: Blood on my jets
Author: Budrys, Algis
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Blood on my jets" ***


                           BLOOD ON MY JETS

                            BY ALGIS BUDRYS

                          ILLUSTRATED BY EBEL

         They were the hired gun-rabble of the System, engaged
             in the dirtiest, most thankless racket in all
           the worlds. But Ash Holcomb was doing all right,
            until the girl walked out of his past with high
             stakes in her pockets and murder in her eyes!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Rocket Stories, July 1953.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Rocket Row is the Joy Street of three planets. It's got neon lights,
crummy dives, cheap hotels, and women to match. Every man who's ever
rode a ship into space knows about Rocket Row. It runs along the far
side of Flushing Spaceport, down toward the Sound.

The New Shanghai was full of dockworkers and crewmen on liberty. It was
noisy. I sat on a bar stool and watched the fog trying to infiltrate
the open door. It didn't have a chance against the tobacco smoke that
rolled out to meet it. Outside, the streets and alleys would be choked
with wet, creeping darkness, full of quiet footsteps, and the cops
would find empty-pocketed corpses behind the ashcans in the morning.

       *       *       *       *       *

But none of that was any of my business. I was sick and tired of
fog--the real kind, the kind they grow on Venus--and I was sick of the
thought of blood. I'd seen too much of it, soaking into the hot mud,
and some of it spilled by my guns. I wanted to forget the night, and
fog that gave cover to every kind of dirty deal a man could imagine. I
wanted to pull the corners of my world together until all that was left
was the drink, the bar stool, and me. But it wasn't going to work out
that way, because I was in the New Shanghai on business.

And my kind of business was the dirtiest, lousiest, most thankless
racket in the world.

The bartender moved up to where I was sitting. "Have another one, Ash?"
he asked.

"Yeah, sure, Ming," I said. "You still make the best Stingers in the
System. Maybe that's because you don't brew your own gin."

"Could be, Ash, could be," he laughed. He shook up the drink and poured
it in my glass. "How'd it go on Venus?"

"It went," I said.

Ming was one of the few people who admitted knowing I was a D.O.--a
Detached Operative. It was a crummy job, but it suited me.

We were the hired-gun rabble of the System, thrown together into the
damnedest police force there had ever been. Spacial expansion hadn't
really gotten underway until after the Terro-Martian War, and after it
ended every would-be bigshot there was had realized that all he really
needed to set himself up as a pocket-size dictator was some salvaged
gear from the mess the war had left, a crew that wasn't too particular,
and a good-looking piece of territory in the practically limitless
areas of space. Most of them had picked slices of Venus. There were a
few in the Asteroids, hooked up with renegade Marties, and one or two
that had actually grabbed sections of Mars.

Sending regular law enforcement officers or Marines after each one of
these boys would have been physically impossible. Earth government had
come up with a cuter idea.

It was a lot more economical to fight one big decisive battle than to
endure a series of inconclusive skirmishes. There were a lot of us
boys out in space, most of us just drifting from one port to the next,
picking up a living by our wits, and by our skill with a gun, some of
us. Earth government had quietly picked out the ones they considered
trustworthy, sworn us in, and turned us loose with a few standing
orders and a lot of dependence on our discretion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whenever something brewed between two of these minor warlords, we'd
come flocking in and hire ourselves out to whichever side we felt had
slightly more justice. Sometimes we wound up shooting at each other,
but you couldn't even be sure of that, since most of us didn't know,
beyond a guess or two, who the other D.O.'s were. Usually, though, we
had enough brains to pick the right side, and we'd make sure that was
the one that came out on top.

It was a process of elimination, actually. The warlords were helped
to knock each other off until, eventually, those who remained either
proved themselves to be strong leaders, which was what frontier planets
needed, or else megalomaniacs, in which case it paid to devote a
full-scale military campaign to them.

It was a highly informal system, but it had worked. It was tough on us,
but it wasn't any harder than freelance grifting had been. It left an
awful lot to personal discretion, and we paid ourselves out of whatever
came to hand, but there hadn't been any big totalitarian regimes
lately, either.

"Yeah, I did pretty well," I repeated.

Ming puckered his mouth and winked. I used to try and figure out how he
did it, standing behind his bar all day, never going out, never talking
much except to a few people like me. But I knew for sure that he could
have told me exactly how much I'd made on that Venus job--and the
gimmick I'd pulled to get it past Customs, too.

But that was why I was in here. Something was up--something big, and I
wanted to find out what it was before every grifter and chiseler in the
System tried to cut a piece of it for himself.

"I got a note in my mailbox today," I said casually.

"Yeah?" he asked, just as quietly.

"Must have been put there as soon as I touched down this morning.
Somebody wants me to go to work for them. They're paying high--too
high, maybe. Hear anything about a big job coming off somewhere?"

Ming grinned. "If you mean that little letter from Transolar, yeah, I
know about that." He got serious, and moved closer.

"But that's all I know, and nobody else knows even that much. Sure,
something's cooking, but nobody knows what it is. I--" He broke off.
"You've got company. Boy, _have_ you got company!"

I looked in the backbar mirror. A girl had come in the doorway and
was walking toward me. Her dress tightened in intriguing places. Her
face was as much of a treat. High-cheeked, brown-eyed, with a small,
uptilted nose and a full mouth, it was framed by short curly hair the
color of new copper wire. I liked it.

So did the spacemen and the dockworkers sitting at the bar. One or two
half-rose to invite her to join them, but they sat down again when they
saw who she was headed for.

There was something about that hair. I'd seen it before, somewhere.

The guy next to me got up and slid out of the way. I let my eyes stay
on the bottles on the backbar until she sat down beside me. I gave Ming
a look. He nodded, and moved down the bar.

"Ash?"

The voice was low, but crisp. It had whispers and murmurs in it, too,
and I knew I'd heard it before.

"I'm Pat McKay."

I turned my head and looked at her. Her dress, tight as paint from
hem to bodice, was mysteriously loose in the sleeves. Ruffles at each
shoulder hid bulges that Mother Nature never put there. They looked
more like twin shoulder holsters. They were.

       *       *       *       *       *

And the last time I'd seen her, she was seventeen--eighteen, maybe--in
a ball gown, her hair long then, curling around her shoulders.

And the voice hadn't been as controlled, or as crisp, but she'd been
saying, "You're a good dancer, Mr. Holcomb. Not much on the light
conversation, but a good leader."

I'd swept her around another couple, and kept my cheek away from hers.
"The Academy is geared to the production of good leaders, Pat. Good
conversationalists, on the other hand, are born, not made."

She laughed--a giddy party laugh from a girl who dated Academy boys
exclusively, who loved the glitter and pomp of graduation ceremonies,
who hung around the Academy all she could, who had been to Graduation
Balls before, and would certainly be to a number of them again, before
she managed to separate all the black and silver uniforms she'd danced
with and found herself a man from inside one of them. An Academy
drag--a number in a score of little black books.

"Like Harry--oh, pardon me, it's Graduation Night--like Mr. Thorsten,
you mean?" And she looked up at me, raking my face with her green eyes.

"If you will."

"You're jealous, Mr. Holcomb," she said, breaking out her best little
tease manner.

"Maybe." I knew she was trying to get me angry. She was getting there
fast, too.

"Well, now, if you displayed some of Mr. Thorsten's other gifts, I
could forget about the conversation," she said lightly.

"Meaning you'd like me to dance you out on the terrace and make a pass
at you?"

"Maybe."

She was daring me.

I danced her out on the terrace, and found a darker corner. She looked
up at me, her eyes a little surprised, but her lips were parted.

I tightened my arms and kissed her. It started gently--just a kiss
sneaked in between dances--but her arms were growing tighter too, and
her fingers were hooking. We held it, while I listened to the blood
running in my ears, until we broke apart, both of us dropping our arms,
standing and looking at each other, dragging air down our throats.

"Ash! You--"

She started to say something, and broke it. It sounded a little too
much like a movie heroine, all of a sudden. She was holding the pose
a little too long, too. "Hell, she's a kid--she's doing it the way
the grown-ups in the movies do it," I told myself, but I'd danced her
out here for a purpose. Maybe she didn't deserve it, but I was sick
to death of the little bits of fluff that hung around, drinking in
borrowed glamor, getting the big play from boys like Harry Thorsten.

I reached out and grabbed.

"Now comes the part you've really been asking for," I said. I crouched,
bent her over my knee, and brought my hand down. Hard. Three times in
all, putting everything I had into it.

"Now," I said, letting her get up, "maybe you'll quit bothering guys
who worked all their lives to get in a spot where they could go out and
be of some help in the only job they ever wanted--the TSN. Do you think
you really stack up worth a damn beside the only thing that counts?"

She just stood there, tears of rage in her eyes. I was never sure
whether it was what I'd done or what I said that had her so mad, but
the last thing I heard her say as I walked away was: "Damn you, Ash
Holcomb! Damn you for being such a snobbish stuck-up...."

Well, maybe I was wrong and maybe I wasn't. I didn't know as much in
those days as I should have, either. But it was too late now--too late
by a war and a hundred revolutions, too late by all the men who'd gone
down before my guns, too late by years of loneliness and bitterness.

But if it was too late, why did I remember it all now, with Thorsten up
in the Asteroids, a little king in his own right, with me in the New
Shanghai, a white ray-burn splashed through my hair, with the Academy a
dim thing behind both of us, and Pat--

Why was Pat here? What had she done through the years, while I fought
my way from one end of the System to the other, and Harry took the
easy way out during the war?

       *       *       *       *       *

"Hello, Pat," I said. "I haven't seen you in a long time." Well, what
else was I going to say?

I don't know what she had expected me to say. She kept her face in
profile, and didn't let me see what it was showing.

"I'm here on business. I hear you're a good man, these days, for the
job I've got." She twisted the words like a knife.

All right, if she wanted it that way, she'd get it.

"So they tell me," I said.

"Fifteen thousand for a month's work."

She said it quietly, without any build-up. Maybe she figured fifteen
thousand didn't need one.

I sat there for a minute, not saying anything, but thinking hard. What
kind of a setup was she offering me? Was this the big job that was
floating around? There's usually a sure way to find out. When someone
offers you a blind deal, argue. Maybe they'll get mad, or scared you
won't take it, and spill something.

"No, thanks," I said.

She frowned. "Don't try haggling with me, Ash. I can get somebody just
as good for less."

"I don't doubt it. You could probably get three. That's why I don't
want any part of it. It's sucker bait."

She looked at me for the first time, mouth twisted.

"Since when does a hired gun like you turn down that kind of money? The
job's worth it, believe me."

That hit me. But I couldn't afford to get touchy.

"Probably is. But with standard pay at three thousand a month, plus
bounties and commissions, this little errand of yours, whatever it may
be, must break so many laws it could land me in a death house," I said,
watching her eyes.

It didn't add up. Nothing added up. Why had she picked me, in the first
place? I had a reputation as one of the better gunnies, sure, but there
were at least twenty guys I'd never draw against, if I could help it,
and four or five of them were available. Because she'd known me? And
this job--what kind of hanky-panky was going on at these prices?

I watched her eyes acquiring dangerous highlights. The temper that went
with that hair was beginning to stir.

"Do you want to get in on the biggest deal that's ever been pulled off
in space or don't you?" she said. "Or are you going to chicken out?"
she added contemptuously.

I let it slide off my shoulders.

"I don't know," I said. I wanted to get a chance to really talk things
out with her, and this wasn't the place for it. "Anyway, this is no
place to talk business. Walk out of here as if I'd turned you down, and
go up the street. I'll catch up to you."

"Okay." She got up and walked out.

"Sorry, Honey," I called after her, loud enough for everybody to hear.
A snicker went up. I cut it off with a look at the characters lined up
against the bar, and got back to my drink. I finished it casually, put
it down, paid, and walked slowly to the door. I let everybody get a
good look at me turning down the street in the opposite direction from
the one Pat had taken.

I ducked into the first cross street and moved swiftly over to the
alley that paralleled the street that Pat was on. I was thinking all
the way.

Being a D.O. was one thing--getting into something solo was another. I
could get killed, for all I knew, and maybe by a lawman's gun. That was
a risk I ran on every job, but in this case, I didn't even know, yet,
what was going on. The smart thing to do would have been to pass the
word to my SBI contact, but that would take too much time. There was
nothing I could do but dive into this mess head-on, and hope I'd have
time to yell for help later.

I was about to turn into another alley that ran back to the main street
when I heard the coughing of a Saro airgun and the faint sizzle of a
Colt in reply.

Instantly, I was running silently up the alley. One hand unzipped the
chest of my coverall, and the other one dove in and grabbed the butt of
the heavy Sturmey that's my favorite man-killer. I reached the mouth of
the alley and stopped abruptly in the shadows.

A man lay in the middle of the street, unnaturally flat against
the concrete slab. The street lamp up the block was dark, its base
surrounded by shattered glass.

The Saro went into action again from the roof of a building across the
street. I saw the slugs chip cement from the railing of a flight of
steps four doors up. A pale blue flare winked from behind the railing,
and the man with the Saro ducked, but was up again as another gun raked
the stairs from a spot on my side of the street. I didn't like that
setup one bit.

The Sturmey in my hand went _whoomp!_ and the man on the roof sailed
out over the street and landed with a crunch. The other gun cut off
abruptly. Two Colt beams probed for it from the stairs, and that
clinched it. It was Pat, all right, and somewhere, she'd become a fair
hand at street fighting.

"Hey, Pat!" I yelled, and ducked away from the storm of bullets the
other gunman flung at me. The result was what I'd hoped for. The man
had exposed himself to Pat's fire by shooting at me. The Colts sizzled
viciously, and the burst of Saro noise stopped in mid-clip.

A gun clattered on cement. I poked my head cautiously around the
corner. Silence blanketed Rocket Row, and then was tempered by a
scuffing noise. Up the street, a leather belt was being pressed against
the side of a building by the weight of a body that was sliding slowly
downwards. I spotted a glowing dot that was a tunic smoldering around a
Colt burn.

"Ash!"

"Yeah?"

"You okay?"

I grinned. She sounded a little worried.

I sprinted across the street at a weaving run, and dove behind the
stairway.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I don't know--but I've got an idea. I got about a hundred yards up the
street when I spotted this guy tailing me. I yelled, and he ducked. At
the same time, this other fellow started running toward me across the
street. I burned him down, and ducked in here just as the bird on the
roof opened up. That's it, until you came along."

I swore. I didn't go for three men gunning one girl. I looked over the
top of the railing. One or two people were starting to come out of
doorways.

"Maybe we'd better get out of here," I said.

       *       *       *       *       *

We ran up the street to another alley. She re-holstered her guns on the
way, revealing a lot of what the dress advertised.

We stopped inside the alley and caught our breaths. "Well, anyway," I
said, "I know what you're in this for."

She looked up sharply. "What?"

"You need money to buy some underwear with."

She slammed her hand into my face. I ducked back, and stood there,
blinking.

"Look, Holcomb, as far as I'm concerned, the deal's on. Fine. Thanks
for helping me out back there, too. But just thanks--no further
payment. And no kidding around. This is a business deal. Have you got
that straight, or do I burn you down where you stand and find another
boy?"

She meant it. I looked down at her hand, and one of the Colts was in it.

"Okay." I hadn't meant that crack as a pass, but as long as the
question had come up, it was all right by me to have it settled right
here. "But put that thing away before I make you eat it."

She grinned, suddenly, and put the gun back. "I'm sorry, Ash. But
it's the best way I've ever found to establish a clear-cut business
relationship. Partners?"

She stuck out her hand, and I took it.

"Deal."

A siren rose and died on Rocket Row. Pat jumped back. "Damn it!" she
said. She shot a glance up the alley. "We'd better split up," she said.
"Look, Ash," she said hastily, "I'll get in touch with you. Meanwhile,
do what I tell you to, and don't waste time asking me why. I'll tell
you later. All you have to do now is take the job Transolar is going to
offer you. That's all. Take that job, and start to carry it out. I'll
be in touch with you somewhere along the line."

She looked down toward the alley's mouth. I followed her glance, and
saw shadowy figures of men running by.

"They'll be in here in a minute. I've got a car a couple of blocks
away. I'll see you, Ash."

"Yeah. Hurry up," I added, as the first of the cops came warily into
the alley.

I pulled my gun and ducked behind a barrel as she started to run. The
cop yelled and came after her. I snapped a shot over his head, and
that drove him into cover. Over the shouts that rose, I could hear her
footsteps fading out.

I followed her cautiously, sliding from behind one ashcan to another,
keeping the cops down with an occasional shot. I made it out of the
alley and into the street, then ducked into a doorway, kicked the lock
loose, took the stairs two at a time to the roof, and got away over the
housetops.

And all the time, I was wondering about Pat, the job that Transolar was
going to offer me, and how she'd known about it.



II


Mort Weidmann was the same Captain Weidmann who'd left an arm in the
cockpit of a K class scoutbomber that he'd flown through a formation of
Marties while he almost bled to death. He looked very military in his
blue and silver uniform. It wasn't a TSN uniform, of course, but even a
Transolar Express rig makes an old soldier feel better.

He was another old friend of mine, like Thorsten. The three of us had
been touched by the war, each in our separate ways. Mort was the one
who didn't just feel a yearning for space, who didn't just ride on a
TSN uniform because it was the one available way. Mort had loved the
TSN itself, with a pride in the traditions that guys like Thorsten and
me hadn't quite had. He'd been a better officer because of it--and the
only one who couldn't have stayed.

And, as we'd gone our separate ways, so our ways of thinking had
changed. Thorsten--well, he'd taken his choice, and some day I might
have to go into the Belt and do something about it, but Mort's attitude
hurt. He didn't have any respect for me--he couldn't have, for a man
who'd resigned his commission and become a planet-hopper.

He stood at the window in his office, his phony arm tucked into a
pocket, his moustache moving up and down as he talked to me.

"I don't know why they picked you, Ash," he said.

I leaned back in my chair. "I don't either--unless maybe it's because
they couldn't find anybody else with my qualifications. Or maybe it's
because they can trust me, and they know it." I was getting pretty mad.
Weidmann was a right guy, but I was getting sick of being offered jobs
without being told what they were. Two in two days was a little too
much.

Weidmann turned around. "Don't get edgy, Ash! I've got my orders--they
came down from the top brass, and I'll carry them, whether I approve or
not. But don't get me sore. I'm authorized to offer you ten thousand
dollars, plus expenses, for one trip to Titan and back. You'll be
carrying extremely valuable cargo, and you'll be expected to deliver it
intact. Do you want the job, or not?"

I didn't answer him right away. What was wrong with him? There was more
than just dislike riding his voice.

"I don't get," I stalled. "Like you've said, why me? And why Titan?
There's nothing out there. Besides, the Asteroid Belt is full of
Marties, to say nothing of Thorsten and his crew. Nobody in his right
mind would try to make that trip without a convoy."

Weidmann flushed. "For your information," he said, "there's a small
scientific staff in a bubble on Titan. They need a new charge for their
power pile, and we've got the shipping contract. Our problem is to
get it to them without Thorsten or the Martians learning about it and
grabbing it up. That's why we dug you up. We need somebody who can fly
it out to them and fight off raiders at the same time. You're still the
best available."

So that was the big job! No wonder there were so many phony things
going on!

"For God, for Country, and for Transolar, huh?" I said, watching
the blood leave his face. "Now why should I help you pull your fat
contracts out of the fire? What's it to me if a bunch of technicians
don't get their damn fuel? The stuff'd be worth plenty to either
Thorsten or the Marties. Living in the Asteroids isn't fun--I've done
it, and it takes power to maintain a bubble. Believe me, they'll throw
everything they've got to keep a ship carrying a pile charge from
making it past them."

I must have sounded pretty nasty about it, because Weidmann actually
yanked that murderous motorized artificial arm out of his pocket. He
pulled up his shoulders and looked at me like I was something floating
down a sewer, but he kept his voice even.

"All right, Ash. Ten thousand, plus expenses. You'll be given a new
kind of ship. It's a model we picked up from a manufacturer who had his
contract cancelled by the TSN. She was originally designed for armed
reconnaissance, and we've installed the weapons called for in the
original specifications. She'll outfly anything with jets on it, and
stand off a cruiser, given room to maneuver. Does that soothe you, or
do you want a convoy, too?" he added scornfully.

I lit a cigarette and pretended to think it over. Actually, of course,
I was going to take the job. I would have, anyway, but there were
two additional reasons why I wouldn't turn it down. There was Pat,
of course, and her orders. Most important though, had been the fact
that the message to report to Weidmann that I'd found in my mailbox at
the Spacemen's Hiring Hall had borne a slightly different Post Office
cancellation on the stamp than the usual. The "T" in United wasn't
quite formed the way it was on the regular stamp. It wasn't apparent
unless you looked for it--but it was as good as a big red sign that
spelled out "Official United Terrestrial Government Business--Act as
Directed Within," because that was what it meant.

"Sounds better than I expected," I admitted. "All right. When do I go?"

Weidmann didn't show any expression to indicate disappointment or
satisfaction. He simply said, "Tonight, after we check over the
details. The ship's equipped with standard TSN controls, and you'll
have lots of time to test her flight characteristics once you get out
in space."

"What happens if she explodes? Don't I get to test her first?"

"No--there isn't time, and it would be a dead giveaway." For the first
time, I saw something like satisfaction on Weidmann's face. "And if she
explodes ... well, frankly, Holcomb, that's your problem."

       *       *       *       *       *

I spent the afternoon being briefed. One thing was off my mind--if I
had official orders to take this job, then the SBI would be keeping a
tab on me. It made a difference, knowing that no matter what kind of a
mess I got into, somebody would at least know what had happened to me,
and, most important, why.

I was given a Company flight suit, and a hip rig for my Sturmey. I put
those on, and was taken to within a block of the port in a shuttered
car.

Not going all the way to the spaceport was my idea. The reason I gave
Weidmann was good enough--there was no sense putting up neon markers
to indicate that I was up to something special--but I had a better one
than that. I had to give Pat a chance to get in touch with me.

It didn't work out that way.

I began walking down toward the Transolar revetment, using a shortcut
street, looking around for Pat. It was a cinch she'd had some kind of
a tail on me, and I was expecting to see her step out of almost any of
the doorways I passed.

Instead, I heard something.

Back up the street, the way I had come, boot soles whispered on
concrete. I turned around and looked, buried in shadow.

I couldn't see anything. I turned back around, and kept on walking, and
I heard a holster being unsnapped. I stopped to listen, and there was
only silence. I moved, and somebody slipped a safety catch.

I leaped suddenly to my right. My shoulders touched the wall of a
house. My hands blurred forward, one locking on my holster and holding
it down, the other scooping the Sturmey out and clear of the leather,
then blurring again as I shot my hand as far away from me as I could,
fired down the street, and spun myself away from the building. I fired
again, and the street lamp above my head smashed into bits. Then I
was in a deep doorway, crouched, waiting, while ribbons of light cut
creases in the wall where I'd been.

That was how it began. There were endless minutes of silence, and then
someone would drag a heel or kick a step. There'd be the kick of my gun
against my palm, and once, the count on their side dropped from five to
four.

A dot of light flickered from behind a high gutter, and rock chipped
off a wall near my head. I ducked, kissed the sidewalk with my belly,
slithered down a flight of steps to a basement alcove, rolled over,
and slid behind the stone. On the way down, I fired back, and I heard
a rasp of metal on stone. Not the momentary rake of a belt buckle or
button, but a gun, dragging its muzzle against curbing while the man
who'd fired it kicked his life away in the gutter. I heard it drop the
last inch to the street.

       *       *       *       *       *

I knew they'd be flanking me pretty soon. I heard cloth whisper as two
of them slipped off to each side. The fellow they'd left behind began
firing from all angles, weaving back and forth to cover them. He put
too much pattern in his weave, though, and that was his mistake. The
pattern broke, and became random as the guns spun out of his hands
before he could even realize there was a shot coming.

Two! I rolled away from behind the steps, crouched, and padded away
on the balls of my feet. My boots had special sponge soles on them,
but even so, a lance of blue slashed from down the street against my
calf. I plowed into the sidewalk, furrowing my face and tearing meat
off the knuckles wrapped around my gun. I tried not to catch my breath
too loudly as I dragged myself behind the ornamental outcrop of the
bannister on the next flight of steps.

My leg felt like there was a railroad spike driven into it, and my
knuckles were numb and stiff. I worked my fingers to keep them from
freezing up on me, even though jolts of pain came up and hammered at
the backs of my eyes. My face felt wet and itchy. I lay there, waiting.

I got one more of them. He decided I was dead, and poked his pale face
out against a black wall. The face vanished in a burst of red, and he
sprawled back. I chuckled.

There wasn't much I could do but chuckle. The one guy left had me
cold. I had no idea where he was, but he'd seen the flash of my gun. I
couldn't shift position fast enough or quietly enough to get away. All
I could do was lie there.

He took a chance and jumped me. I never heard him coming.

A gun bounced off my head, and I went under--But not before I looked
up and saw that it was Pat herself.



III


I remember lying on my back for quite awhile before I wanted to open
my eyes. I knew I wasn't on the street. The air was warm, and heated,
and I was on a bed, or something like it. My leg was giving me hell
where it had been burned, but I could feel the pressure of a bandage.
I couldn't tell about my hand and face--they felt as if something had
been done about them, too, but I couldn't find out for sure without
looking or touching them, and I didn't want to do that yet.

_Why the hell had Pat jumped me?_ I couldn't figure it.

I opened my eyes, and she was standing over me, a gun dangling from one
hand. I threw a look at my watch, and saw I'd been out a half hour, at
most.

"What the hell--" I began.

She cut me off with a gesture of the gun. "Shut up," she said wearily.
"You'll have plenty of time to start lying later." She grimaced with
tired disgust.

I shook my head, but I knew better than to go on talking. There was
anger working its way into the hurt look in her eyes.

I got up, ignoring the feeling in my calf, and noticed several other
things. I'd been lying on a low couch. My flying boots were unzipped,
so that I couldn't move faster than a shuffle. The coveralls were loose
around my waist where my harness had been.

I pressed my left upper arm against my ribs. As far as I could tell,
they hadn't found my insurance policy--a little singleshot burner
hidden between two of my ribs under a strip of what looked like skin.
There was collodion on my face, and tape on my knuckles.

"Happy?" she asked.

"Uh-huh. I'm Prince Charming, you're Snow White, and, as far as I can
add up, somebody's fresh out of dwarves. What's going on around here,
anyway?"

"You double-crossed me, that's what happened. We made a deal, and
you sold out on it!" She was working herself to boiling mad, clear
through--and that explained why she'd looked at me the way she had.

I shook my head again, trying to clear it. I was getting mad myself.

"Look, Pat, I can take just so much mysterious crap, and no more," I
said, feeling the blood starting to work itself into my face. "I got
in from Venus, after winding up one of the prettiest insurrections you
ever saw. I got my belly full of the sound of guns and the smell of
death, and all I wanted to do was relax and spend the dough I made. No
sooner do I take my first drink of decent liquor in six months than you
walk up to me and start the goddamdest mess I've ever been in!

"All right--we made a deal. As far as I know, I've carried out the
orders you gave me. I got the job for Transolar, and I started it.
Nobody but you and I know there's something funny going on, though I
suppose the cops are starting to suspect--seeing as I've killed five
men in two days, and helped you knock off two more. Now let's get a few
things straight around here! I've been shot at, slugged, and generally
treated like a supporting star in a cloak and dagger movie. Either I
get some fast answers, or I start slugging!"

I'd been moving forward as I talked, getting madder and madder, and
closer to being ready to dive for that gun and rip it out of her hand.

She was starting to lose some of her determination. The gun muzzle was
dipping. I reached out my hand.

The gun was centered on me again in an instant, but the fire was gone
out of her eyes.

"Hold it, Ash!" she said. "You sound too mad to be lying, but you
haven't convinced me yet. Just stay put a minute. You want to know
what's going on? You should have a pretty fair idea by now," she went
on, still keeping the gun on me. "I'm after that power pile you're
supposed to fly out to Titan. Harry needs it."

       *       *       *       *       *

I should have known, I suppose. Well, maybe she was still space-struck.
Thorsten played rough, and he had some strange friends, but so far he
hadn't earned a full-scale visit from the TSN. It didn't mean as much
in this case, though. He would have been a tough nut to crack, sitting
out there in the Asteroids with a good-sized fleet behind him. Still--

But that was for another time. I let her see by my face that the
subject wasn't closed, and then I went on.

"Yeah--keep talking. Who jumped you on Rocket Row last night? Why were
you trying to pot me a while ago?"

"Because--goddam it, I don't know _what_ to think!" she said. "Those
were SBI men last night. I knew they were trailing me, but I thought
I'd gotten rid of them before I contacted you. Maybe I did--maybe
they picked me up again when I went back out on the street. Anyway,
we killed them, but the SBI knows damn well who did it. We did enough
yelling back and forth to let all of New York City know who it was."

That had been a dumb play, all right. I didn't have time to curse my
stupidity, though. I didn't care one bit for the idea of me having shot
an SBI man. It was his own fault, but it wouldn't help my record any.

"All right," I said, "so they were SBI men. That's tough--for them."

"Why haven't we been picked up? I've been hiding out all day--but how
did you get away with walking in Transolar in broad daylight and coming
out again, if you didn't make some kind of deal?" She was gnawing on
her lip. "Damn it, give me a reasonable explanation, and I'll forget
the whole thing."

That sent me off. I knew why I hadn't been picked up, all right--they
were waiting for me to blow this deal open for them. Maybe, if I did
that, they'd forget I'd killed one of them. I'd have to do a really
good job, though.

But I wasn't doing too much reasoning, right then. I'd been mad all
night, but that was nothing to what I felt right then.

I could feel a big red ball of pure rage building up inside me. My
fingers started to tremble, and my vision got hazy.

I swung out my hand and slapped the muzzle of the gun as hard as
I could, and to hell with what it did to my bum hand. The gun went
spinning away, taking skin off her fingers as it went, and crashed into
a wall. I swung my hand back and slapped her across the face. She fell
back and hit the floor. She lay huddled in a corner, looking up at me,
her eyes wide and her mouth open with surprise.

"You'll forget the whole thing, huh? All I have to do is explain away
some half-baked idea that came into your head, and you'll forgive me,
is that it?" I reached down, grabbed her shoulder, pulled her to her
feet, and held her there. Her mouth was still open, and she couldn't
get any words out of her throat.

"You're going to _forgive_ me for getting me into a deal that involves
killing SBI men. You're going to forgive me for having a guy that used
to be a buddy of mine hate my guts, I suppose. You're going to forgive
me for slapping my face, and I'm going to get your gracious pardon for
having to fight it out for my life tonight against five guns. That's
just fine! Is that supposed to cover getting shot and knocked around
and slugged?"

I hauled back and slapped her again. "And that's for pointing a gun
at me! Twice. I live by a gun, and I expect to die by one, someday.
But not at the hands of a woman who can't fight a man on his own
terms, and has to keep him off with a gun after she gets herself into
a mess. All right--you know how to use one. But, so help me, you wave
one of those things at me again, and I'll ram it down your throat
catty-cornered!"

I pushed her away, and she slammed back against the wall. "One more
thing," I said. "Have you ever heard of the SBI fooling around making
deals with a guy that's killed one of their men? Not on your life!
They're a tough crew, and a smart one. If they thought I had anything
to do with that fracas last night, I'd be on my way to a Federal
gas chamber right now, if I was lucky enough to live through the
working-over they'd give me! Use your brains!"

She stood against the wall, staring at me, making sounds in her throat.
One of her cheeks was starting to puff.

I started for her again. Her eyes got even wider.

"Ash!"

Her voice was high and frightened. Somehow, it cut through the deadly
anger in my chest, and made me stop.

"Ash! Please--Ash--I...." She put her hands up to her face and stood
there, sobbing into them.

My nails were digging into my palms. I opened my hands, and saw blood
running over my knuckles where the tape had torn away. There was some
of my blood on her dress, where I'd grabbed her shoulder.

"Ash! Please--I'm sorry--It--it's just that I didn't know what to
think."

I don't know how I got over to her, but then I had my arms around
her, and she was digging her teeth into the cloth of my shoulder, and
sobbing.

"Pat, why do you have to be this way? Why can't you--" I was saying,
and stroking that red-brown hair. She wasn't a tough, self-assured
woman who could gun a man down without blinking. She was a soft, hurt,
crying girl, mumbling through tears, her body shaking.

I wasn't a guy who'd fought his way through a war and countless battles
since, either.

She pulled her face away from me, and looked up. Her eyes were wet, but
she wasn't scared any more.

I looked down at her. I started to say something, but she stopped me.

"I had it coming, Ash," she said softly. "I didn't trust you. I should
have known better."

She half-smiled. "I haven't met too many people who could get worked up
over not being trusted."

I couldn't look at her. I was going to have to turn her over to the SBI
some day, and I couldn't look at her.

"Ash, remember the night you spanked me? Remember what you did first?"

I felt her hand on my face, turning it. Then she was kissing me, her
lips soft and fresh, her wet face under my glance, her long lashes down
over closed eyes. Her arms moved on my back, and her body was as light
as a dream in my arms.

My own eyes closed.



IV


Flight coveralls are designed to be airtight when fully zipped. Hoods
with transparent face-plates and oxygen leads can be hermetically
sealed to the collars, and every ship has emergency plug-ins for the
oxygen tubes. In combat, all spacemen keep their hoods thrown back,
like mackinaw hoods, so that if a hole is blown in the hull, they can
slip the hoods on and plug into the emergency oxygen supply. Struggling
into a full-dress spacesuit is too complicated a job to entrust to the
few frantic minutes that spell the difference between life and death,
and meanwhile, the coveralls are far more comfortable in flight.

Besides, anyone who'd seen what a spacesuit does to a figure like
Pat's will agree that it's a dirty shame.

While Pat was climbing into her outfit, I was outlining the plan we'd
have to follow. As long as I was going to go along with this offer of
hers, temporarily, at least, I might as well do it right.

"I got into a cab accident, or something," I said. "That accounts for
the shape I'm in. You're an old friend of mine, and since I'm in no
condition to fly and fight at the same time, I'm taking you along as
co-pilot.

"Weidmann'll stick me for your pay, of course. I'll make sure he
does--that way there won't be much kick about you coming along,
especially if I make it a 'both or neither' proposition.

"When we get out in space, you show me how to get to Thorsten's bubble
in the Asteroids, and that's it. We deliver the pile charge, shoot
back out into space, fake the signs of a big battle, and yell for help
over the radio. There'll be a squawk about you being a woman then,
of course, but hell, us spacebums are supposed to be devil-may-care,
aren't we?"

It was a great little plan, all right. It would give SBI the location
of Thorsten's base, and it wouldn't hold up delivery of the pile
charge any longer than it would take to salvage it. Meanwhile, space
would be rid of Harry.

"Sounds like it'll work, all right," she said. "I wish I was surer the
SBI didn't have anything big on me. It'll be a bad enough stink as it
is." She grinned. "But we'll make out."

       *       *       *       *       *

Weidmann was out at the field, fuming over the fact that I was an hour
and a half late.

He surprised me, though. He didn't boggle over taking Pat along, once I
gave him a story about being lightly hit by a car and having to take my
friend along.

Pat had had a tight cloth strapped across her breasts, her hood over
her face, and I'd gotten her into the ship fast.

"Okay, okay, who gives a damn what happens to you, as long as the job's
done," Weidmann said, but I couldn't believe him, somehow, when he
added, "I don't even care who does it, personally."

He slipped an envelope into my pocket. "Something for you," he said.
"Don't open it until you're past Mars, and don't let your friend see
it--for awhile, anyway." He chuckled, and surprised me by doing it. He
looked secretly happy over something, as if he knew about something
awful that was going to happen to me. "You'll have some sweet
explaining to do to your friend, Holcomb. I'd love to see it." But
there was still that note of something more than laughter, more than
most feelings, in his voice.

He wouldn't say more than that. He just shoved me into the ship and
slammed the hatch.

I kept watching him in the starboard screens as we checked off the
instrument board. He was a little figure at the edge of the field,
staring wistfully up at the ship, his mechanical arm in his pocket.

I couldn't wait until we were past Mars to open the letter, of course.
We'd be too close to the Belt by then. I read it while Pat was at the
controls.

    _Holcomb_:

    _I don't know exactly why--except that you're the best there is, I
    guess--but you've been picked for this job._

    _As you may have guessed, Transolar Express is a blind for some
    pretty big Government bureaus. This isn't a ship the TSN cancelled,
    of course. It's a top-secret job built according to the
    specifications laid down by the Titan labs._

    _When you hit Titan, turn the ship over to the technicians there,
    and they'll install the additional equipment that's part of your
    cargo of "pile fuels." The rest of your load really is fuel, but
    it's not meant for the Titan pile--it's for the engines in the
    ship._

    _When it's ready, you'll fly the ship to God knows where. You won't
    refuse, I know, because I wouldn't either, if I'd been given the
    chance to fly the first ship into hyperspace._

                                                                 _Luck,

                                                             Weidmann._

When I'd finished it, I went back to the engine room and took a look at
the drive. Then I went to the cargo compartment and stood looking at
the hatches. They were sealed--welded shut.

I went back up forward, and waited until Pat had to leave the controls
for a few minutes.

The minute she dropped through the hatch I was over at an emergency
tool kit, and a few seconds later I was ripping off bulkhead
panels with a screwdriver. I got a fast look at banks of dials and
instruments, and slapped the panels back up before Pat got back. Then I
went down to my cabin and just sat on a bunk, staring at the wall.

That cocky little bastard! That frozen-faced terrier of a man, cursing
me with all his heart because I was getting the chance he'd have had,
if he hadn't given his right arm too soon!

And he had wished me luck.

I was proud, then, of being an Earthman, of being a fighting man, of
having earned the right to get my name in the history books.

I stood there, a big dumb jack-ass.

All of a sudden, it had hit me. I'd been asking a lot of questions
lately, and getting only partial answers. Now I had all the answers,
and I hated every one of them.

The misdirection and lying on Weidmann's part was clear as a bell. It
had been designed to get me off Earth and headed for Titan without
anybody knowing the real reasons--even me. They knew that if the real
secret ever leaked out, every renegade and pirate in the system would
swarm down, battling to the death to get their hands on this ship.

So they pulled the purloined letter gag. They hid the ship and its
mission in plain sight. They sent me off in her to deliver the engine
parts to where the hyperspatial drive could be assembled, and from
there I'd be able to fly her to whatever star they chose, ghosting
along in a universe where the speed of light as we knew it was not the
fastest speed a ship could hit.

They'd given me a good excuse, too. "Pile fuels!" A big enough cargo
to justify using me and a special ship, but not so big that I couldn't
handle the opposition I'd get from the Belt gangs, who'd fight for it,
sure, but who'd try a lot less hard, and discourage a lot easier, than
they would if they knew what was really up.

The only trouble with that was that they did know.

Sure--what else could it be? Earth was thick with two-bit sneaks and
spies who sold information to anybody with the price. Even Earth
government thought enough of them to cook up this big production. One
of them must have dug deeper than anyone thought.

Thorsten knew, that was a cinch. He knew so well, that he hadn't even
wanted to chance a fight out in space, where the drive might get shot
up. He'd sent Pat out to decoy me into him.

       *       *       *       *       *

I stood there, cursing, my big fists closed into sledges. Pat--Pat,
that beautiful, wonderful actress. Pat, who was death with a gun and
arson for me with her lips.

All my life, I'd been getting mad at people and things. During the war,
I was crazy mad at Marties. Afterward, I was mad at anybody who wanted
to push other people around. I got mad at Pat, because I thought she
was playing me for a sucker.

And Pat had taught me what hatred could do. She'd given me love to
replace it.

And played me for a sucker.

I stood there--Ash Holcomb, the toughest man in space, maybe. Not the
smartest--no, not the smartest. The dumbest, the stupidest chump who'd
ever fallen for the oldest gag in history.

And nobody knew about it. Back on Earth, they were sure they'd gotten
away with it. Even Weidmann--Weidmann with the grin, Mort Weidmann who
had gone helling around in a hundred dives with me, who didn't need
obvious signs like long hair or breasts to spot a woman's figure--he
thought everything was all right, too. He was probably shaking his head
with envy, back on Earth, thinking of all the fun I'd be having in
hyperspace.

Nobody knew the mess the System was in, except me. And nobody could do
anything about it, now, except me.

That thought knocked me out of the raging mood I had been working
myself into. I couldn't afford to lose my head.

I'd been wondering how Thorsten was going to work a rendezvous right in
the middle of the Belt, with renegade Marties that had held out from
the war swarming all over the place, just waiting for a prize like
this.

The answer was simple--he'd worked out an alliance with them. Probably
the Marties thought they could use it to reconquer the System. If I
knew Harry, he had other plans, but they were probably just as bad.

What in hell was I going to do?

One more thought hit me, that was the worst one of all, because it held
out an impossible hope.

It was all right to picture Weidmann getting a boot out of me taking a
woman along. Under ordinary circumstances, that might have been true.
But this was too big, too important. There were two alternatives.

Weidmann must have known I was a D.O. I could assume that. But, knowing
how important the job was, Weidmann wouldn't have let Pat come along,
no matter what, _if he hadn't thought she and I were working together_.

And that one stopped me cold.

_Was she, or wasn't she?_



V


What was Pat doing, tied up with Thorsten? She was a high grade
operator now, as far from the immature tease I'd known at the Academy
as I could imagine. Where had she learned to handle a gun like that?
Where had she gotten the experience that let her handle a job this
size by herself?

I couldn't answer that--not any of it, and it was driving me nuts.
I stared over the control banks at the forward screen, watching the
stars, and beating my brains out.

We'd been out in space for two days, and I hadn't dared to try and find
out. You don't, when you're alone with the woman you love.

She was standing next to me, and I looked up at her. The coveralls gave
a pretty good indication of what lay beneath, and it was top grade.
Not that her figure was that spectacular--she had something more than
figures on a tape measure. There was a precision, a slim freshness and
freedom to the way one curve flowed into another. It sounds silly, but
the way she held herself reminded me of a thing I'd seen once; a rocket
transiting the sun, fire sparkling from the shimmering hull, and the
Milky Way behind it.

I finally caught what I was trying to phrase; she looked as if she was
poised for flight.

She grinned down at me. "Like it?" she asked, chuckling. Her green eyes
crackled with light, and there were little demons in her laugh.

I tried to think of a clever comeback, but I couldn't. I just said,
"Yes."

I did like it. And I hated it, at the same time.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ship was fast, but space is big. I had a week to plan my next moves
while we worked our way through the area between Earth and Mars' orbit
where the TSN kept the raiders down.

But the week went by, and I didn't think of anything. I'd be working
over the control board, and then I'd look up, and she'd be smiling at
me. I'd raise an eyebrow, and she'd stick her tongue out. We shared
cigarettes. I'd take a drag, hand her the butt, and she'd cuff me when
I blew smoke in her face.

"Hey, Goon," she'd say from behind the plotting board, "d'ja hear the
one about the lady sociologist who wandered into Bessie's place on
Venus?"

I taught her original verses to _The Song of the Wandering Spacemen_.
Then she taught me the verses she knew.

We crossed Mars' orbit. I couldn't think of any way to find out what
I'd been killing myself over except to ask.

"Ever hear of the D.O.'s?" I asked quietly.

"Will chewing chlorophyl tablets cure 'em?" she asked.

I laughed so hard that I cried.

"I don't think so," I answered automatically, and got busy checking
the breech assembly on one of the ship's rocket launchers.

"Lay off that, apeface," Pat said. "We won't need it."

"How come?"

"If anybody comes around looking unfriendly, just give 'em this on the
radio," she said, and whistled off a recognition signal in Martian.

I turned slowly away from the launcher.

Thorsten did have a deal with the Marties. What was more, Pat was in on
it. She had to be.

She looked at my face.

"What's the matter, Lump? Something you ate?"

"Sit down, Pat," I said, pointing to the navigation table. "Go on, sit
down!" I yelled.

She turned white.

"You know what kind of a ship this is, don't you?" I said, feeling like
I was a hundred years old.

"Sure." She nodded. She was beginning to get it. "You weren't supposed
to know about that."

"I didn't. Not until we were spaceborne."

Didn't she realize? Couldn't she see what she was doing to me?

"Pat, do you know what'll happen if the Marties get this drive? They'll
be able to hit Earth and Venus with everything they've got, coming out
of nowhere and going back into hyperspace when they're through. The TSN
won't stand a chance against them."

She shrugged. "They probably would, if they ever got it, but they
won't. Harry's going to assemble the drive, install it in his ships,
and then we'll take off. The Marties'll be stuck."

"Wait a minute--you just mentioned taking off. Where to?"

She looked up at me. "Harry says there's another planet out in
hyperspace, somewhere, circling another star. He says people can live
on it." Her eyes were shining, and I remembered a girl on a terrace,
back at the Academy, with a dream in her voice that I'd been too dumb
to recognize.

"He does, does he? Can he prove it? How do you know what he's really
going to do?"

"Because he's told me!" she flared. "He's going to by-pass the fumbling
bureaucrats who run things on Earth and take mankind out to the
stars--mankind, Ash, the toughest, the strongest men in space, and
their women. Space belongs to us, Ash, not to those Earthbound lilies!"

"And whose speech are you repeating?" I said, getting more and more mad
every minute. "Thorsten's?"

"Yes!"

"All right, if you think so God damned much of him, suppose you tell
me what he is to you now?" I asked.

"He's my husband." She didn't even hesitate.

       *       *       *       *       *

I started for her, before I could think of words for the
doublecrossing....

She came off the navigation table like a coiled spring. She had a gun
in her hand.

"Ash--get back! I don't want to hurt you. Ash--can't you see why? Do
you think I'm the kind who--?"

I kept coming. "No," I said, "I can't see why. I'm not built so I could
see why. And yes, I do think you're the kind."

"I don't know why I had to pick you!" she screamed then. "Maybe I
remembered something--maybe I found something out, after it was too
late--"

She was crying, but she was bringing the gun up at the same time.

I didn't care. I didn't care if she pulled the trigger or not.

"I told you," I said between my teeth.

She had the gun aimed right at me. Her face was gray, and her hand was
shaking.

"I told you the last time what I'd do if you ever pointed a gun at me
again." My voice was coming out low, but it had absolutely nothing in
it. It was just words, coming out one by one.

The gun muzzle was shaking badly. She put up her hand to steady it.

"I--" she said. There were tears running down her cheeks in a steady
wet stream.

She should have pulled the trigger. I think she should have. But she
didn't.

I smashed my fist against the gun, and it was out of her hands,
crashing into metal somewhere.

"Ash!" she screamed, and raked her nails across my face.

She kicked up her knee, and fire exploded in my groin. I fell forward,
slamming her down on the deck, and threw my entire dead weight across
her shoulders.

I didn't have to. Her head had hit the deck, and she lay unconscious,
blood seeping out through her hair.

       *       *       *       *       *

She wouldn't talk to me. She lay on her bunk, her chest rising and
falling under the straps I'd buckled around her.

I tried to explain, to make her understand, somehow.

"Pat, I've got a responsibility to the people I work for. I've spent
the last ten years keeping characters like Harry Thorsten from taking
over this System. It's a rough job, and it's a dirty one. I can't help
that. I don't like it. Pat, it's got to be this way."

She wouldn't talk to me. She wouldn't listen. I walked out of her
cabin, locking the door behind me.

Locking a door and forgetting what's on the other side are two
different things.

I went up to the control room and set a course for Titan. Maybe once we
got out there, I'd be able to convince her.

It was a lousy hope. I didn't even understand her--she was like
something I'd never seen before. How could she be like she was? How,
goddam it, _how_?



VI


Titan lay ahead of me, pursuing its track around Saturn.

My ship drove toward it, flaming out fuel in reckless amounts as I
poured on the acceleration. I had to get there fast. We'd already
missed our rendezvous time with Thorsten by two days. He was going to
figure out what happened--must have done so already--and would be hot
behind us. I had to land, get the engines installed, load supplies, and
take off into hyperspace before he hit.

It was a race against time. I built up velocity to a point no sane
skipper would ever dream of, leaving just enough fuel to brake with,
knowing I wouldn't need it to get back.

Part of me sat in the control room, plotting curves, charting fuel
consumption figures on a graph, watching the black line rise hour by
hour to the red crayon slash that meant I had done all I could.

And part of me was down in the cabin with Pat, but if I'd let the two
parts mix....

       *       *       *       *       *

No ship in the System had ever hit the speed I begged out of my ship's
heaving engines. No human being had ever traveled as fast before,
tracing his track across the white stars in the blue fire of his jets.

If I made it to Titan in time to get into hyperspace, I would have Pat
with me. There'd be stars to look at, and the worlds that circled them.
Star on star, marching past the ship, world after spinning world, fair
against the stars, and a million things to see, a thousand lifetimes to
live.

Out there, where other beings lived, was adventure enough for both of
us, and enough of dreaming. Maybe she'd forget Thorsten, maybe some of
the things she'd said had been lies, maybe the whisperings in darkness
were true.

If I could get to Titan in time.

I might as well have walked. I knew there was no hope before I
finished landing.

Titan was an empty moon. Where the project bubble had been was a circle
of fused concrete around a mess of melted alloys. A corpse in a TSN
spacesuit lay on its back and stared at Saturn.

I looked down at it, cursing, my shoulders slumping under the weight of
my helmet.

And I heard the voice on the command frequency.

"Hey--you--you down by the bubble." The voice was weak, and getting
weaker.

"Yeah!" I shouted into my mike.

"Holcomb?"

"Yeah, for Christ's sake! Where are you?"

"Your right--about a hundred yards. Start walking over here. I'll talk
you in."

I started off at a lope, kicking my way over the rough ground. That
voice was pitifully weak.

I found him, curled around a rock, his head and arm supported on a
rifle that was leaned against the stone.

"Holcomb--"

"Yeah." He couldn't even turn his head to look at me.

"I'm Foster--Lou Foster. Commanding, Marine guard detail."

I remembered him. The one who filled a practice football with water.

"Yeah, Lou. How's it?"

"No damn good at all, Ash. I've been waiting for you."

"Thorsten?"

"Yeah--our old classmate, Harry the horse. About thirty-forty hours
back."

"You been in that thing all this time!"

"Sure--snap, if you breathe shallow and don't drink anything. Helps to
have a couple of spare tanks." He could still try to chuckle.

"Well, hell, guy, let's get you over to my ship."

"No can do, Ash. No sense to it."

I was straining to hear the words now, even with his set right next to
mine, I knelt down and touched helmets with him.

"Listen, Ash--he's got the stuff. The diagrams, the charts, the
figures--everything. He's even got the tech detail to put it together
for him."

"All right, Lou. It figured. But can the yak. Come on, boy, over my
shoulder you go, and down to the can with you."

"Lemme lay! Goddam it, quit tryin' to move me! I didn't walk over
here--I got flung when the dome let go!" He was screaming.

"Sorry, Lou!"

"S'all right." He bubbled a chuckle. "I see by my infallible little TSN
instruments that I'm gonna run outta breathin' material 'na couple
minutes. 'S'all right by me. Luck to ya, Ash."

"Yeah."

But he didn't strangle. He didn't choke in his helmet; there was still
air in his tanks when he died.

       *       *       *       *       *

I went back to my ship and sat behind the control board, smoking a
cigarette. I rubbed a hand across my tired eyes, and wondered what I
was going to do next.

Thorsten had thought of everything. He couldn't have found technicians
to assemble the drive anywhere else, so he'd come out here and
kidnapped them. That was an elementary move, obviously planned far in
advance.

I'd been running a useless race. I would have realized it long ago, if
I hadn't been half-crazy about Pat.

She laughed at me when I told her about it, but she laughed in a
peculiar way.

"I could have told you," she said, laughing. "Ash Holcomb, the big
undercover agent, heading like mad for Titan! And what does he find?"

"I found Lou Foster, Pat," I said, feeling the steel in my voice
slicing upward in my throat.

"That wasn't anybody's fault!" she said quickly. "He happened to get
in Harry's way."

"Go tell Andrea Foster," I said.

"Stop it, Ash! You can keep bringing up horrible examples, but it still
doesn't mean anything, compared to travel to the stars."

"What was wrong with the way it was going to be done?" I asked.

But she was pulling her protective shell of mockery around her again.
"Oh, stop it, Ash! You're licked, and now you're trying to justify it
by claiming foul, the way losers always have."

But the last thing she said, as I slammed out of the cabin, was:
"This time, you got the spanking, Ash. Now stop crying about it." But
somehow, she didn't sound as happy as she'd probably expected.

I took the ship back out into space, finally, heading Sunward. All
I could do was hope I'd get within radio range of a TSN ship before
Thorsten found me.

But that didn't happen. I wasn't anywhere near the Belt when I had to
sit and watch Thorsten's fleet come flaming at me out of space and
surround my ship, sliding into tight courses that held me on a deadly
and invisible leash.

And I could feel things crumbling inside me. All the principles
the Academy had built in, and love, and fear--remorse, friendship,
bravery--none of it meant anything. They were things that human hearts
and minds were capable of, but when yesterday's love is today's
revulsion, when friends are deadly enemies, when all the world thinks
of you as just another space bum--what then? I had the destiny of the
System riding in the holds behind me, and nobody really knew or cared
that I'd break my heart to keep it safe.

They were my eyes, but they weren't altogether normal as I stared out
of the control room screens at the waiting fleet.

They kept their distances. They all had their launchers pointed at me,
and on a few of the old T Class rack-mounts I could see the homing
torps lying in wait on the flat upper decks.

I went back to Pat's cabin. She was sitting up on her bunk, staring at
me. Fire lay buried deep in her eyes, but she kept her face smooth.

"Okay, Pat," I said. "Thorsten's got his crew in a globe around me. He
wants this ship. Should I give it to him?"

What I was saying didn't match my voice. I was tired, and mad, and I
couldn't look at her. I could feel my lower teeth sliding back and
forth against my upper ones.

"No--I know you too well, Ash," she said. "Not the way you'd give it
to him." She pushed herself up and stood in front of me. Her eyes kept
getting wider and wider. "Ash! You're crazy. If you think you can fight
your way out of this--" her voice broke. "You know you don't have a
chance. I've seen Harry's fleet in action. This is one ship, Ash--_one
ship!_"

       *       *       *       *       *

Her entire body was radiating urgency. She was standing stiff-legged,
every muscle quivering, trying to get her words through the desperate
red haze that was building up in front of my eyes. I couldn't see her
very clearly.

But I could see her well enough to laugh at her.

"Fight?" I said. "_Fight?_ I've had fighting--all the fighting I'm ever
going to do. I've been fighting too much, too often. I had a name and a
friend, once--and I had a girl, once, too. Now all I've got is a job,
and some orders, and a conscience, maybe. No--I'm not going to fight."
I threw back my head and laughed again. I reached out and grabbed her
arm. "Come on--you're going to have a grandstand seat."

I pulled her up the companionway and into the control room, and threw
her into the co-pilot's seat. I pulled out my gun.

"Reach for those controls," I said, "and I'll blow your hand off." She
sat in the chair, her face gray, staring out at Thorsten's fleet.

I reached over and switched the radio to Thorsten's frequency.

"Thorsten!"

"Yes. Holcomb?"

His, too, wasn't quite the same voice it had been. It was even,
clipped, used to commanding a crew that didn't enjoy being commanded.

"I've got Pat," I said, keeping my gun on her.

"Let's stick to relevancies, Holcomb. How much for the ship?"

He'd given himself away! I could have laughed.

"No, Thorsten, let's keep it where I want it--how much for Pat?"

There was a pause on the other transmitter. I was playing my cards
right. Thorsten had me, and the ship. But I had his wife, and that
was swinging the scales my way. Why should he offer to pay me, now?
A bluff? No--he had a better one in the ships, with their launchers
ready. Why should he be willing to dicker for the ship? Because she was
in it, that was why. If I refused to give up, he could always blow me
out of space, or take the ticklish chance of trying to disable the ship
without wrecking the engines. But he wasn't going to do that. Pat was
worth too much to him.

"Thorsten! You heard me--how much for your wife?"

He cursed me. His voice was a lot lower than it had been.

"I've got a gun on her, Thorsten."

Suddenly, he sighed. "All right, Holcomb. You win--but not as much as
you'd think. I'll make a deal."

I laughed at him, still keeping my gun pointed at Pat with a
rock-steady hand. "What am I supposed to think you've _been_ doing,
Thorsten?"

It was getting to be too much for me. I could feel all the pressure
that had built up in the last ten days starting to come to a head,
ready to explode and to hell with who the pieces hit.

"Oh, no, Thorsten--no deals. No bargains, no sell-outs, no compromises.
I'm up to here on doublecrossing and crisscrossing. I hired out to you
and Transolar, and before that I hired out to anybody who had money or
a chance for me to get some. And all the time, I was hired out to Earth
government. I've had too many jobs, Thorsten--my gun's been on the line
too long. There are too many oaths and too many loyalties. Too much of
my honor's been spread from one end of the System to the other. Now I'm
quitting. The towel's going in, and from now on, it's me that I fight
for."

I had the mike up against my mouth, and I was yelling into it. "I know
what you're going to offer me, Thorsten. I know what I'd offer. You
want the girl and the ship. You want one as bad as the other, but you
won't settle for half. So you're offering me my life, and a free ride
to Earth. Well, you can take that deal and stuff it. Earth! Who the
hell would want to live on the Earth you'd leave, after you and your
Martie friends got through with it. No, Thorsten, it's no bargain. It's
a Heads you win, Tails I lose proposition, no matter how you slice it."

I laughed again, enjoying it, because it was going to be my last laugh.

"Holcomb!" He must have guessed what I was working myself up to do,
because there was sheer desperation in his voice, but I cut him off.

"Shut up, Harry! I told you I was quitting. You know the racket I'm in.
You don't just quit it. You go out with your hand on the wheel and your
jets full on. _And here I come!_"

I fed flame into my portside jets, throwing the mike away from me as
I grabbed the controls. The ship arced over, singing her death-song
in snapping stanchions and straining plates, in the angry howl of the
converters, in the drumfire of jets that coughed and choked as fuel
poured into them, but which opened their throats and bellowed just the
same.

"Ash!" That was Pat.

"Holcomb!" That was Thorsten.

But I was pure metal-jacketed, fireborne death, howling silently toward
the sleek cruiser that was Thorsten's flagship, the best known and most
feared silhouette in space.

       *       *       *       *       *

The gates of Hell opened in space. Every ship in the hemisphere ahead
of me vomitted fire as the ones behind me and beside me lanced out of
the way of the arrowing missiles.

There was no way for Thorsten to avoid me. Fire blossomed at the
throats of his jets, and the flagship shot forward.

I snarled, twisted the wheel, and kept my nose pointed for his bridge.

Proximity torps began exploding all around me. They weren't doing
Thorsten a bit of good. Either they hit me, or, without air to carry
the shock, they were as good as not there at all.

"Here's your hyperspacial drive, Harry!" I howled. "Here it
comes--compliments of Ash Holcomb, hired gun!"

Suddenly a missile exploded under my bow. It was a clean hit. The ship
screamed escaping air, and shuddered, bucking upward. It wasn't just
stanchions ripping loose now, or buckling plates. It was snapping
girders, and metal spewing out into space like teeth from a broken
mouth. The trouble board winked solid fire at me.

I didn't care about that. The ship was unhurt in the only place that
counted--her engine room--and the stern jets kept firing. But I was
bent over the wheel, sobbing in pure, white-hot, frustrated rage,
because I was going to miss. I'd been slammed up off my trajectory high
enough to miss, and Thorsten's ship was firing every tube he had to
drive herself down and away, behind a protective screen of other ships.

I could hear the hysterical relief in Thorsten's laugh over the radio.

I could hear something else, too. It hadn't mattered what Pat did, once
I'd swung the ship into line. I couldn't have pulled it out of the
collision course myself. It had taken an atomic rocket to blast me out
of the way.

But it was different, now.

I was folded over the wheel, blood running down my chin from my bitten
lip, my knuckles aching as I tightened my fists.

Pat said: "Ash--I'm sorry." There was a sob in her voice. "But you
won't give up," she stumbled on. "You'll never give up, until you and
Harry are both dead. And I couldn't stand losing both of you."

I never knew what she hit me with, but the back of my skull seemed
to explode inward, and I slid out of the seat to the deck. I started
crawling toward her. She sobbed, but she hit me again.



VII


The fleet had scattered back to the hundreds of hidden berths among the
farflung Asteroids. I came awake in a pressurized burrow dug out in
the particular rock Thorsten had chosen for himself and his crew. I'd
been dropped in a corner and searched down to my shorts. There wasn't
anything on me that I could use for a weapon.

Except--no, I caught myself before there was even a quiver in my left
arm. Now wasn't the time to press against my ribs, to try to feel the
almost imperceptible bulge of the singleshot capsule between my ribs.

I groaned and let my eyes flicker open.

"How's it, Ash?"

I looked up. Thorsten was standing a few feet away from me, looking
down from under his spreading black eyebrows.

I put my hand up to my head. "Crummy. She hits hard."

Harry chuckled.

He wasn't a specially big man, but he was large enough. He had deep
black eyes under his brows, an aristocratic nose that had been broken,
a slightly off-center mouth whose lower lip was tighter on one side
than the other, and a firm jaw. His hair was black--almost as black as
mine, and as short. He hadn't changed much.

His voice started in the pit of his stomach, and worked its way
up. When he chuckled, the sound was almost operatic, deeper than I
remembered it.

"Why shouldn't I kill you, Holcomb?" he said.

I climbed to my feet, and looked into those probing eyes. "Go ahead.
Give me half a chance, and I'll kill you."

He laughed. "The old school tie," he said. His voice dropped an octave.
"Relax, Holcomb. You're alive, for the time being. Come on, let's get
some food."

He reached out and slapped me on the back.

Thorsten's mess hall was another pocket in the Asteroid. It was
connected to the burrow I'd been in by a tunnel in the rock, and as we
walked down it, I'd had a chance to get quick looks into branching
corridors and other burrows that were machine shops, arsenals, ration
dumps, and living quarters. Just before we turned into the mess hall, I
caught a glimpse of an airlock hatch at the end of the tunnel. That was
where Thorsten's ship had to be--and my own, too, unless I missed my
guess.

As long as I had a functioning mind, I was going to use it.
Automatically, a map of as much of the layout as I'd seen was filed
away in my brain.

       *       *       *       *       *

The mess hall must have been the largest single unit in the entire
chain of burrows that honeycombed the Asteroid. It was lit by clamp-on
units, like the rest of the place, but the lamps were spread a little
farther apart, so it was darker. Even so, I could see that most of the
space was filled with men sitting at the long mess tables.

"Quite a setup, isn't it, Holcomb?" Thorsten asked, leading me toward a
table that was slightly set apart from the others.

"Looks like an improved standard TSN base," I said.

Thorsten chuckled again. He must have liked the sound of it.

"In many ways, that's more or less what it is," he said, sounding
pleased.

We got to the table, and stopped.

All the other mess tables ran end to end from the far side of the
burrow to this. Thorsten's table was set at right angles to the others,
and a separate chair that was obviously his was placed so that he could
look over all the other men. The table had a snow-fresh cloth on it,
and was set in high-polish silver. Heavy napkins lay beside each of the
places. I glanced down at the other tables. They were bare-boarded, but
that wasn't going to make much difference to the men sitting at them.

But all of that took about half a minute's looking. What stopped my
eye cold was Pat, dressed in an elaborate gown, seated at one end of
Thorsten's table.

"Stop staring, Ash," Thorsten said, the laughter running under his
words like the whisper of a river. "Let's not keep our hostess waiting."

"Hello, Pat," I said as I walked over to the chair that Thorsten
indicated was mine. I was sitting next to her.

She half-smiled, but her eyes were uncertain. "Hello, Ash." She glanced
quickly over toward Thorsten, who had reached his own chair.

Thorsten stopped next to the chair and laid his hand on its back. It
was a signal.

"_Attention!_"

A paradeground voice near the door wiped out every other sound in the
hall.

       *       *       *       *       *

There were close to six hundred men in the mess hall. All of them
were suddenly on their feet, snapping to, the sound of boots on rock
thundering through the burrow. The men faced each other across the long
tables, staring straight ahead.

The successive crashes of sound died out. I stood casually next to my
place. Pat was the only seated person in the hall.

Thorsten stood where he was, his hand still on the chair, looking out
over his men. The silence held.

"All right, men. Let's eat," Thorsten said casually. There was another
roll of sound through the hall as six hundred men sat down and long
platters of hot food were rushed out to them by table orderlies.

Thorsten and I sat down, and the three of us at the table faced each
other.

"Enjoy the show?" I asked Thorsten. He came back with a peeved look.

It was my turn to chuckle, but I had enough sense to keep it inside. I
was right back to not being sure of what to think, as far as Pat was
concerned. How much of our affair had been pure bait, and how much of
it did Harry know about?

He motioned to a waiting orderly, who stepped forward and poured wine
into the crystal goblets beside our plates. Thorsten reached forward
and picked his up. "A toast, Holcomb!" The black eyes bored into mine.
I picked up my glass.

Thorsten turned toward Pat and raised his glass. I looked at her. Her
face was pale, and her eyes were oddly urgent. She couldn't seem to
take them off Thorsten's face.

"To my wife!" Thorsten said, and drained his glass.

I drank out of my own. It was good Burgundy--cold and dry in my mouth,
and warm as it came down my throat. I set the glass gently down. If
Thorsten was expecting me to react, he was disappointed.

But he was laughing, the sound echoing through the burrow, none of the
men paying any attention to it. I looked at Pat.

"Another toast!" Thorsten's glass had been refilled.

"To Ash Holcomb--hired gun and angel of death!" He was laughing at me,
and at Pat. He knew, or guessed, and death was lightly hidden by his
laughter.

       *       *       *       *       *

"_Don't do it, Holcomb!_"

Thorsten's voice was ice. I looked at my hands. They were hooked into
talons, and I realized that there wasn't a muscle in my body that
wasn't tensed and ready to cannon me across the table. I could even
hear the snarl rumbling at the base of my throat.

I looked to the side. A man with an open holster flap was standing
there, his eyes locked on me.

"Do what, Harry," I asked casually, "propose another toast?"

He looked uncertain for a moment. Then the smile and the laugh came
on, and Thorsten was Thorsten again. He didn't know about the chained
lightning that was running in my arteries instead of blood. He was a
dead man as he sat there, and he didn't know it. In a way, that was
funny enough to me to keep waiting.

"A toast? It certainly is a night for toasts, isn't it?" Thorsten
murmured.

Pat hadn't moved, and stopped looking at him. I didn't know if she'd
looked at me when I was ready to go for Thorsten's throat--but I didn't
think so. Now she smiled. I wonder how much it cost her because her
lower lip was gray where she'd had it between her teeth.

I had my glass refilled. I nodded toward Pat--and gave Thorsten the
Academy toast. "Here's to space, and the Academy. To stars, to the men
that walk them, and to the flaming ships that fly."

I looked at Thorsten for the first time since I'd raised my glass, and
it was my turn to laugh.

He was gray, and somehow smaller in his thronelike chair. He stared
across the table at me, and then let his eyes fall. Hesitantly, he
spread the fingers of his hand, and looked at the pale circle where the
ring had been.

And, incredibly, he laughed.

"Score one for the opposition," he chuckled. "Nice going, Ash."

I laughed with him, keeping it on a casual plane. I'd done what
I wanted to--hit him where he lived. Now, if I could give the
conversation a nudge in just the right direction, I might be able to
start him talking about his plans. I was that much closer to an outside
chance to do something about them.

"What happened, Harry?" I asked. "How'd you get from the TSN into being
the top man in the Belt?"

He bit. While Pat and I sat there, Pat nervously shifting her glance
from him to me, and me not daring to look at her because of the things
I'd say to myself, he told his story. The orderlies brought our
dinner, putting dishes down and taking them away as he talked between
mouthfuls.

"They don't talk much about me, I guess," he began. "It's a pretty
ordinary story, anyway. I was in the war, with my own squadron. We ran
into some bad luck, combined with a set of orders that got mixed up. I
lost my men. I lost a leg, too."

He leaned down and slapped his right thigh. It rang with metal. "I
didn't enjoy that. While I was in the hospital, they brought charges
against me. I wasn't given time to prepare an adequate defense, and
they threw several paragraphs of the book at me. I was dropped a rank
in grade, and slated for duty at a procurement office. I got my break,
then. The Marties, under Kull, hit the Moon at practically that time."

I remembered that. They'd gotten a toehold and established a forward
base, and Earth had started getting hit with atomic missiles.

"All of a sudden, anybody who could walk or be carried into a ship was
tossed into a raggle-taggle fleet the TSN dredged up. That included me."

He grinned, "Only they made two mistakes. The first one was in
thinking I still owed Earth any kind of a debt. The second was the
bigger one--they gave me a crew raked out of every brig and detention
barracks in the fleet. I guess they didn't think I was fit to command
anything else."

He grinned. "Pat was in a Wasp unit attached to the base. I took her
along."

       *       *       *       *       *

He waved his hand at the men in the mess hall. "Some of my original
crew are still with me. I simply headed for the Belt, and sat out the
war. The boys didn't mind one bit. We had plenty of stores, and they
knew nobody would bother us while there were more important things
going on. Afterwards--well, we've done all right."

He had. Some of the freight lines bribed him. Some didn't.

Uncounted millions in rare minerals were scattered among the tumbling
rocks of the Belt, but nobody dared to mine them. He'd given refuge to
the stragglers from Mars' broken navies, and built a kingdom on blood
and loot.

"I know what I'm called on Earth," he said. "I'm a butcher, a
brigand--all the names there are. Even another fighting man, like you,
Holcomb, thinks I'm a renegade and a traitor to humanity for throwing
in with the Marties. Well, they're blind, Holcomb!"

His open palm came cracking down on the table. "They can't see that
Earth is rotten to the very marrow in its mis-shapen bones, that any
system that would do to a man what it did to me is based on stupid
bungling! The war--Holcomb, you were in that, you know it was the most
useless piece of imperialism the System has ever seen."

He was staring intently into my face. I did him the favor of keeping my
expression blank, but if he expected me to nod, he was going to wait a
long time. I couldn't help thinking of Mort Weidmann. Mort left an arm
on Mars; he wasn't bitter about that, and he didn't think it had been a
useless war. It had been the Marties for System bosses or us, and they
wouldn't have been gentle overlords.

But Thorsten was going on, and now he'd gotten to the part I wanted to
know.

"There's got to be a change, Holcomb. Humanity isn't fit to go out to
the stars the way it is. It's not ready for the hyperspatial drive.

"It's not going to get it."

I was beginning to understand. Most important, I could finally
understand what was wrong with Thorsten. I could see the Messiah
complex building up in front of my eyes. The laugh--the easy,
chuckling, self-assured laugh--the laugh of a man who was never wrong,
and knew it.

"I've got the drive, Holcomb, and I'm going to use it. _I'll_ be the
standard-bearer of the human race among the stars. There won't be any
fumbling and bumbling--no bureaucrats, Holcomb, no splinter groups, no
special interests, no lobbies."

The dream was like a banner in his eyes.

"Nobody but you, right?" I said.

"Right!" the palm went down on the table again. The wine was beginning
to loosen him up. His voice was losing the first fine edge of control.

       *       *       *       *       *

And I finally understood about Pat. She was looking at Thorsten, and
the same dream was plain on her face. That was all she saw--that, and
the man. She couldn't see the gray rockets bellowing above the burning
cities.

"_Have_ you got the drive?"

"Damn right! Those technicians I lifted from Titan are working on your
ship now. Then a test flight, and after that, a whole fleet--my fleet,
equipped with the drive and ready for the jump.

"There's a planet out there, Holcomb. The Titan Project found it. A
planet, Holcomb! Earth-type! Do you think I'd let those idiots on
_Earth_ have it!"

That locked it up. He was completely paranoid.

Pat was still looking at him, lost in the dream. She couldn't be
bought, and she couldn't be taken. But she could be in love. Maybe, as
a man, I stacked higher up with her than Thorsten did--but I couldn't
rival the Dream.

"Seems to me a thing like that will take more supplies than generations
of intercepting freight would give you. Where'll you get your
equipment?" I asked.

I'd timed it right. A lot of Burgundy had gone down, followed by
Sauterne and Chablis.

"That's where my Martian--friends come in," he said. Pat leaned
forward. This was a part she'd never heard before, an answer to a
question nobody but an old hand at expeditionary forces would ask.

"The Marties think they're going to get the System back, some day." He
laughed. "They've been trying to persuade me to help them for a long
time, now. Well, I'm going to. After my fleet has the drive. We'll
invade Earth, then. The TSN won't be able to stand up to us--not when
torps start coming out of nowhere. Picture it--all of Earth, busy
fighting us off, all its attention on the invasion, and on nothing
else. Then, when the fighting's going nicely, my men and I will raid
a few choice supply dumps I've had spotted for a long time. We'll
load up on equipment and supplies, and take off, leaving some badly
disconcerted Marties to finish their little revolt any way they want
to--with no Earth for them to conquer!"

"_What?_" It ripped out of me. Pat was sitting there, her mouth open
too, the same stunned question written on her face.

Thorsten laughed his omnipotent laugh again.

"Certainly! Didn't you know, Holcomb? Ordinarily, of course, a
hyperspatial ship will take off from a planet on standard atomic drive,
and cut to her hyperspatial engines when it's out in deep space. But
it's possible to take off directly into hyperspace--the only trouble
being that the warp changes a hundred cubic miles of adjacent mass to
C-T matter."

"Seetee! You mean contraterrene?" That was Pat, tense-faced.

I couldn't say anything. I sat there, staring at Thorsten--calm,
laughing, deliberate bringer of death to a world and its billions.

Because C-T atoms, in contact with normal matter, reacted violently. A
hundred cubic miles, detonating instantaneously, would leave a ring of
dust where Earth and Moon now swung.

"There will be no cancer of humanity in space!" Thorsten declared.

I jumped for him.

One slug caught my shoulder. The other plowed through the muscles of my
back. I lay bleeding among the broken glass and dishes on the table.
Thorsten swung a rabbit punch at my head, and laughed.



VIII


The cell was small, dark, and damp. There were stitches across my back,
under tape, and a traction splint and bandages on my shoulder. Let's
forget pain. Pain.... _Let's forget it! Forget it!_

I lay on my belly. I'd been on my belly for most of a week. And for
most of a week, I'd thought of how it would be to dig my fingernails
into my side, rip loose the phony skin over my ribs, and fire that one
shot into Thorsten's guts.

All I needed was a chance. Here in the cell, in a corridor somewhere,
alone with him, surrounded by his men, chance of life or no--that
wasn't what counted. I wasn't sane myself, anymore. There were two
people in the Universe--Thorsten and me--and room for one!

A chance. Lord God, a chance!

But all I had was dampness and darkness.

I was fed twice a day--or something like it. It was almost time for my
next meal, but that wasn't the important time. It was the helpless week
behind me, the week in which Thorsten's kidnaped technicians had had
time to assemble the ship's engines. The test flight was due, and after
that the production of engines for the other ships in Thorsten's fleet.
If I was going to do anything, I had to do it now.

I dragged myself up the side of the cell, leaving meat from my fingers
on the rough stone. I staggered over to the wall beside the door and
waited.

Time went by--hours or minutes--and a sound of feet came down the
tunnel leading to my cell.

I couldn't use my back muscles, but I tensed them now, feeling stitches
give way.

Tumblers clicked, and the door was opened.

I kicked it shut and sprang, wrapping my hands around a dimly seen
throat, a thin and soft neck.

"Ash!" Pat's voice was half-choked under my grip.

"Pat!" I opened my hands, and she stumbled free. But not for long,
because an instant later she was pressed against me again, her mouth
over mine.

       *       *       *       *       *

We stood together in the darkness and in hunger. Finally, she moved her
lips away.

"Ash, Ash, you can stand!" She was sobbing with relief.

"Yeah--I'm on my feet."

"Can you fight?"

"Nothing bigger than you," I said. "What's going on?"

"He's crazy, Ash. That plan of his--I'd never heard it before. All he
told me was that he was going to take humanity out to the stars--he
said he didn't trust Earth government to do it."

"Yeah. I know. For that dream, I would have done what you did, too."

"I didn't love him, Ash. He--I don't know, he _was_ his dream, somehow,
and in spite of it all, he was a better, stronger man than anyone I
ever knew. Except you, Ash."

That was good enough. That was good enough to give her everything I had
or could get. And that made my spot even worse. It wasn't just she that
was going to get hurt--but she was the most important one of them all.

I couldn't even stay with her, here in the cell.

But she knew that too, and there was more to her coming here than that.

"Ash--they've finished assembling the drive in your ship. They've
finished repairs on her bow, too. They're going to run the tests in a
few hours. Everybody's sleeping, except for the maintenance crew, and
they're scattered through the base. Ash--I think we can get out of
here. If we don't run into any guards, we can make it to the airlock.
There'll be a few suits in a locker there. We can make a run for the
ship." Her voice was urgent, and full of hope, and bitterness for the
desertion of a dream--a sick, tainted dream, but her dream for so many
years at Thorsten's side.

And I knew, for the first time in weeks, that Earth had a chance. I
knew, too, that Pat and I....

I could have kissed her then. But I had to be a damned fool. I didn't.

The tunnels and corridors were empty. The machine shops and storage
rooms were dark, and the doors to the bunkrooms were closed. We reached
the airlock.

All I had to do now was to get into a spacesuit and open the lock. The
ship lay beyond it.

Then I heard Harry's laugh!

He stood behind us, holding a slim handgun.

"Running out, people?" he asked. "Bribing that orderly wasn't bright,
Pat. He not only gets to keep his money, but he gets a promotion from
me. That's the way I operate--that's my justice."

Pat and I had turned half-way around, watching him carefully.

"Justice!" Pat flared. "Worry some more about Earth. Worry about the
Universe. Teach them your justice!"

Again the laughter. "I will, Pat."

But the laughter broke.

"Pat--you're my wife. You know my dream--you shared it. Why did you do
it?"

"Yes, she knows your sick dream, Harry," I said.

"Shut up, Ash;" he said quietly. "Don't die with your mouth open."

He fired, but I was on the floor of the tunnel.

"Ash!" That was Pat's voice, but I was rolling, and tearing at my side.

"Get back, Pat!" Thorsten shouted. I was up on my knees, the singleshot
gun in my hand. I charged forward.

He brought up his gun. The noise had awakened everybody in hearing
distance. Doors were opening, men were running.

I pointed the slim tube at his belly and jammed my thumb down on the
firing stud.

He screamed, cupping his hand over the smoking hole I had punched in
his stomach. His knees bent, and he sank backwards, toppling, finally,
as he lost his balance. He opened his mouth, choking, and blood welled
over his chin.

One last shred of laughter bubbled up through his throat.

And someone, down at the other end of the tunnel, fired at us. He
missed me as I crouched over Thorsten's body.

"Ash--"

I had Thorsten's gun in my hand, but I didn't fire back. I spun around,
and looked at Pat, crushed back against the tunnel wall.

"Pat!"

She slid down the wall, and huddled on the floor.

"Pat!" I bent down beside her. It was bad.

Her voice was thick. "How long have I got?"

"Five minutes--maybe ten." I knew I was lying. It was less.

"Ash ... you heard what he said. I was in a Wasp unit. Space was my
dream, too. Always."

I wanted to tell her I knew, now--knew a lot of things. But there was
no use in holding a dying woman, kissing her, and caressing her tumbled
hair for one last time. No use at all, when a world depended on not
taking time for those things.

I put Thorsten's gun in her hand. "Can you still shoot, Pat?"

Her fingers tightened on the butt, and her eyes met mine just once more
before she turned her head.

She was a beauty to watch. Sprawled on the tunnel floor, not looking
at anything but targets over the notch of her sights, calm and skilled
while she covered my retreat as her heartbeats slowed. She cauterized
the tunnel, weaving a fan of death that marched down the corridor,
encompassing and moving beyond huddled and broken men.

I clamped on my suit helmet and spun the airlock controls. I snapped
one quick look back at her. Then the airlock hatch thudded shut behind
me. In a moment, I was on the surface of the Asteroid and running for
the ship.



IX


Earth lies ahead of me, green and safe. The muted atomics behind me
have brought me back from beyond Venus, where the split-second jump
into hyperspace threw me.

Let Mort Weidmann have his farther stars--or anyone else who cares to
try. I've had all I want from the new drive.

       *       *       *       *       *

I gave Pat a funeral pyre. And now the lonely Asteroids have a star of
their own.



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Blood on my jets" ***

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