Starman Jones Read online

  Sam stopped at a shop with the age-old symbol of three golden spheres. “Wait here. Be right out.”

  Max waited and watched the throng. Sam came out shortly without his coat. “Now we eat.”

  “Sam! Did you pawn your coat?”

  “Give the man a cigar! How did you guess?”

  “But… Look, I didn’t know you were broke; you looked prosperous. Get it back, I’ll… I’ll pay for our lunch.”

  “Say, that’s sweet of you, kid. But forget it. I don’t need a coat this weather. Truth is, I was dressed up just to make a good impression at—well, a little matter of business.”

  Max blurted out, “But how did you…” then shut up. Sam grinned. “Did I steal the fancy rags? No. I encountered a citizen who believed in percentages and engaged him in a friendly game. Never bet on percentages, kid; skill is more fundamental. Here we are.”

  The room facing the street was a bar, beyond was a restaurant. Sam led him on through the restaurant, through the kitchen, down a passage off which there were card rooms, and ended in a smaller, less pretentious dining room; Sam picked a table in a corner. An enormous Samoan shuffled up, dragging one leg. Sam nodded, “Howdy, Percy.” He turned to Max. “A drink first?”

  “Uh, I guess not.”

  “Smart lad. Lay off the stuff. Irish for me, Percy, and we’ll both have whatever you had for lunch.” The Samoan waited silently. Sam shrugged and laid money on the table, Percy scooped it up.

  Max objected, “But I was going to pay.”

  “You can pay for the lunch. Percy owns the place,” he added. “He’s offensively rich, but he didn’t get that way by trusting the likes of me. Now tell me about yourself, old son. How you got here? How you made out with the astrogators…everything. Did they kill the fatted calf?”

  “Well, no.” There seemed to be no reason not to tell Sam and he found that he wanted to talk. Sam nodded at the end.

  “About what I had guessed. Any plans now?”

  “No. I don’t know what to do now, Sam.”

  “Hmm…it’s an ill wind that has no turning. Eat your lunch and let me think.”

  Later he added, “Max, what do you want to do?”

  “Well… I wanted to be an astrogator…”

  “That’s out.”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me, did you want to be an astrogator and nothing else, or did you simply want to go into space?”

  “Why, I guess I never thought about it any other way.”

  “Well, think about it.”

  Max did so. “I want to go to space. If I can’t go as an astrogator, I want to go anyhow. But I don’t see how. The Astrogators’ Guild is the only one I stood a chance for.”

  “There are ways.”

  “Huh? Do you mean put in for emigration?”

  Sam shook his head. “It costs more than you could save to go to one of the desirable colonies—and the ones they give you free rides to I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  Sam hesitated. “There are ways to wangle it, old son—if you do what I say. This uncle of yours—you were around him a lot?”

  “Why, sure.”

  “Talked about space with you?”

  “Certainly. That’s all we talked about.”

  “Hmm…how well do you know the patter?”

  5

  “…YOUR MONEY AND MY KNOW-HOW…”

  The patter?” Max looked puzzled. “I suppose I know what everybody knows.”

  “Where’s the worry hole?”

  “Huh? That’s the control room.”

  “If the cheater wants a corpse, where does he find it?”

  Max looked amused. “That’s just stuff from SV serials, nobody talks like that aboard ship. The cook is the cook, and if he wanted a side of beef, he’d go to the reefer for it.”

  “How do you tell a ‘beast’ from an animal?”

  “Why, a ‘beast’ is a passenger, but an animal is just an animal, I guess.”

  “Suppose you were on a ship for Mars and they announced that the power plant had gone blooie and the ship was going to spiral into the Sun? What would you think?”

  “I’d think somebody was trying to scare me. In the first place, you wouldn’t be ‘on’ a ship—‘in’ is the right word. Second, a spiral isn’t one of the possible orbits. And third, if a ship was headed for Mars from Earth, it couldn’t fall into the Sun; the orbit would be incompatible.”

  “Suppose you were part of a ship’s crew in a strange port and you wanted to go out and look the place over. How would you go about asking the captain for permission?”

  “Why, I wouldn’t.”

  “You’d just jump ship?”

  “Let me finish. If I wanted to hit dirt, I’d ask the first officer; the captain doesn’t bother with such things. If the ship was big enough, I’d have to ask my department head first.” Max sat up and held Sam’s eye. “Sam—you’ve been spaceside. Haven’t you?”

  “What gave you that notion, kid?”

  “What’s your guild?”

  “Stow it, Max. Ask me no questions and I’ll sell you no pigs in a poke. Maybe I’ve studied up on the jive just as you have.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Max said bluntly.

  Sam looked pained. Max went on, “What’s this all about? You ask me a bunch of silly questions—sure, I know quite a bit about spaceside; I’ve been reading about it all my life and Uncle Chet would talk by the hour. But what of it?”

  Sam looked at him and said softly, “Max—the Asgard is raising next Thursday—for starside. Would you like to be in her?”

  Max thought about it. To be in the fabulous Asgard, to be heading out to the stars, to be—he brushed the vision aside. “Don’t talk that way, Sam! You know I’d give my right arm. Why needle me?”

  “How much money have you?”

  “Huh? Why?”

  “How much?”

  “I haven’t even had time to count it.” Max started to haul out the wad of bills he had been given; Sam hastily and unobtrusively stopped him.

  “Psst!” he protested. “Don’t flash a roll in here. Do you want to eat through a slit in your throat? Keep it down!”

  Startled, Max took the advice. He was still more startled when he finished the tally; he had known that he had been given quite a lot of money but this was more than he had dreamed. “How much?” Sam persisted. Max told him, Sam swore softly. “Well, it will just have to do.”

  “Do for what?”

  “You’ll see. Put it away.”

  As Max did so he said wonderingly, “Sam, I had no idea those books were so valuable.”

  “They aren’t.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s malarkey. Lots of guilds do it. They want to make it appear that their professional secrets are precious, so they make the candidate put up a wad of dough for his reference books. If those things were published in the ordinary way, they’d sell at a reasonable price.”

  “But that’s right, isn’t it? As the Worthy High Secretary explained, it wouldn’t do for just anybody to have that knowledge.”

  Sam made a rude noise and pretended to spit “What difference would it make? Suppose you still had them—you don’t have a ship to conn.”

  “But…” Max stopped and grinned. “I can’t see that it did any good to take them away from me anyhow. I’ve read them, so I know what’s in them.”

  “Sure you know. Maybe you even remember some of the methods. But you don’t have all those columns of figures so you can look up the one you need when you need it. That’s what they care about.”

  “But I do! I read them, I tell you.” Max wrinkled his forehead, then began to recite: “‘Page 272, Calculated Solutions of the Differential Equation of Motion by the Ricardo Assumption—’” He began to reel off a series of seven-place figures. Sam listened in growing surprise, then stopped him.

  “Kid, you really remember that? You weren’t making it up?”

>   “Of course not, I read it.”

  “Well, I’ll be a beat up… Look, you’re a page-at-a-glance reader? Is that it?”

  “No, not exactly. I’m a pretty fast reader, but I do have to read it. But I don’t forget. I never have been able to see how people forget. I can’t forget anything.”

  Sam shook his head wonderingly. “I’ve been able to forget a lot of things, thank Heaven.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe we should forget the other caper and exploit this talent of yours. I can think of angles.”

  “What do you mean? And what other caper?”

  “Hmm…no, I was right the first time. The idea is to get away from here. And with your funny memory the chances are a whole lot better. Even though you sling the slang pretty well I was worried. Now I’m not.”

  “Sam, stop talking riddles. What are you figuring on?”

  “Okay, kid, I’ll lay it on the table.” He glanced around, leaned forward, and spoke even more quietly. “We take the money and I spread it around carefully. When the Asgard raises, we’re signed on as crewmen.”

  “As apprentices? We wouldn’t even have time for ground school. And besides you’re too old to ’prentice.”

  “Use your head! We don’t have enough to pay one apprentice fee, let alone two, in any space guild—and the Asgard isn’t signing ’prentices anyhow. We’ll be experienced journeymen in one of the guilds, with records to prove it.”

  When the idea soaked in, Max was shocked. “But they put you in jail for that!”

  “Where do you think you are now?”

  “Well, I’m not in jail. And I don’t want to be.”

  “This whole planet is one big jail, and a crowded one at that. What chance have you got? If you aren’t born rich, or born into one of the hereditary guilds, what can you do? Sign up with one of the labor companies.”

  “But there are non-hereditary guilds.”

  “Can you pay the fee? You’ve got a year, maybe two until you’re too old to ’prentice. If you were sharp with cards you might manage it—but can you earn it? You should live so long! Your old man should have saved it; he left you a farm instead.” Sam stopped suddenly, bit his thumb. “Max, I’ll play fair. Your old man did leave you a fair start in life. With the money you’ve got you can go home, hire a shyster, and maybe squeeze that Montgomery item out of the money he swindled for your farm. Then you can buy your apprenticeship in some guild. Do it, kid. I won’t stand in your way.” He watched Max narrowly.

  Max reflected that he had just refused a chance to pick a trade and be given a free start. Maybe he should reconsider. Maybe…“No! That’s not what I want. This…this, uh, scheme of yours, how do we do it?”

  Sam relaxed and grinned. “My boy!”

  Sam got them a room over Percy’s restaurant. There he coached him. Sam went out several times and Max’s money went with him. When Max protested, Sam said wearily, “What do you want? To hold my heart as security? Do you want to come along and scare ’em out of the dicker? The people I have to reason with will be taking chances. Or do you think you can arrange matters yourself? It’s your money and my know-how…that’s the partnership.”

  Max watched him leave the first time with gnawing doubts, but Sam came back. Once he brought with him an elderly, gross woman who looked Max over as if he were an animal up for auction. Sam did not introduce her but said, “How about it? I thought a mustache would help.”

  She looked at Max from one side, then the other. “No,” she decided, “that would just make him look made up for amateur theatricals.” She touched Max’s head with moist, cold fingers; when he drew back, she admonished, “Don’t flinch, honey duck. Aunt Becky has to work on you. No, we’ll move back his hair line above his temples, thin it out on top, and kill its gloss. Some faint wrinkles tattooed around his eyes. Mmm…that’s all. Mustn’t overdo it.”

  When this fat artist was through, Max looked ten years older. Becky asked if he wanted his hair roots killed, or would he prefer to have his scalp return to normal in time? Sam started to insist on permanence, but she brushed him aside. “I’ll give him a bottle of ‘Miracle Gro’—no extra charge, it’s just rubbing alcohol—and he can make a big thing of using it. How about it, lover? You’re too pretty to age you permanently.”

  Max accepted the “Miracle Gro”—hair restored or your money back.

  Sam took away his citizen’s identification card, returned with another one. It had his right name, a wrong age, his right serial number, a wrong occupation, his own thumb print, and a wrong address. Max looked at it curiously. “It looks real.”

  “It should. The man who made it makes thousands of real ones—but he charges extra for this.” That night Sam brought him a book titled Ship Economy and embossed with the seal of the Guild of Space Stewards, Cooks, and Pursers Clerks. “Better stay up all night and see how much you can soak up. The man it belongs to won’t sleep more than ten hours even with the jolt Percy slipped into his nightcap. Want a pill to keep you awake?”

  “I don’t think so.” Max examined it. It was in fine print and quite thick. But by five in the morning, he had finished it. He woke Sam and gave it back, then went to sleep, his head buzzing with stowage and dunnage, moment arms and mass calculations, hydroponics techniques, cargo records, tax forms, diets, food preservation and preparation, daily, weekly, and quarterly accounts, and how to get rats out of a compartment which must not be evacuated. Simple stuff, he decided—he wondered why such things were considered too esoteric for laymen.

  On the fourth day of his incarceration, Sam fitted him out with spaceside clothes, none of them new, and gave him a worn plastileather personal record book. The first page stated that he was an accepted brother of the Stewards, Cooks, and Purser’s Clerks, having honorably completed his apprenticeship. It listed his skills and it appeared that his dues had been paid each quarter for seven years. What appeared to be his own signature appeared above that of the High Steward, with the seal of the guild embossed through both. The other pages recorded his trips, his efficiency ratings, and other permanent data, each properly signed by the first officers and pursers concerned. He noted with interest that he had been fined three days’ pay in the Cygnus for smoking in an unauthorized place and that he had once for six weeks been allowed to strike for chartsman, having paid the penalty to the Chartsmen & Computers Guild for the chance.

  “See anything odd?” asked Sam.

  “It all looks funny to me.”

  “It says you’ve been to Luna. Everybody’s been to Luna. But the ships you served in are mostly out of commission and none of the pursers happens to be in Earthport now. The only starship you ever jumped in was lost on the trip immediately after the one you took. Get me?”

  “I think so.”

  “When you talk to another spaceman, no matter what ship he served in, it’s not one you served in—you won’t be showing this record to anybody but the purser and your boss anyhow.”

  “But suppose they served in one of these?”

  “Not in the Asgard. We made darn sure. Now I’m going to take you out on an evening of gaiety. You’ll drink warm milk on account of your ulcer and you’ll complain when you can’t get it. And that’s just about all you’ll talk about—your symptoms. You’ll start a reputation right now for being untalkative; you can’t make many mistakes with your mouth shut. Watch yourself, kid, there will be spacemen around you all evening. If you mess it up, I’ll leave you dirtside and raise without you. Let me see you walk again.”

  Max walked for him. Sam cursed gently. “Gripes, you still walk like a farmer. Get your feet out of those furrows, boy.”

  “No good?”

  “It’ll have to do. Grab your bonnet. Well strike while the iron’s in the fire and let the bridges fall where they may.”

  6

  “SPACEMAN” JONES

  The Asgard was to raise the next day. Max woke early and tried to wake Sam, but this proved difficult. At last the older man sat up. “Oh, what a head! What time is
it?”

  “About six.”

  “And you woke me? Only my feeble condition keeps me from causing you to join your ancestors. Go back to sleep.”

  “But today’s the day!”

  “Who cares? She raises at noon. We’ll sign on at the last minute; that way you won’t have time to make a slip.”

  “Sam? How do you know they’ll take us?”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake! It’s all arranged. Now shut up. Or go downstairs and get breakfast—but don’t talk to anybody. If you’re a pal, you’ll bring me a pot of coffee at ten o’clock.”

  “And breakfast?”

  “Don’t mention food in my presence. Show some respect.” Sam pulled the covers up over his head.

  It was nearly eleven thirty when they presented themselves at the gate of the port; ten minutes later before the bus deposited them at the base of the ship. Max looked up at its great, bulging sides but was cut short by a crewman standing at the lift and holding a list. “Names.”

  “Anderson.”

  “Jones.”

  He checked them off. “Get in the ship. You should have been here an hour ago.” The three climbed into the cage; it swung clear of the ground and was reeled in, swaying, like a bucket on a well rope.

  Sam looked down and shuddered. “Never start a trip feeling good,” he advised Max. “It might make you sorry to be leaving.” The cage was drawn up inside the ship; the lock closed after them and they stepped out into the Asgard. Max was trembling with stage fright.

  He had expected to be sworn into the ship’s company by the first officer, as called for by law. But his reception was depressingly unceremonious. The crewman who had checked them into the ship told them to follow him; he led them to the Purser’s office. There the Chief Clerk had them sign and thumbprint the book, yawning the while and tapping his buck teeth. Max surrendered his forged personal record book, while feeling as if the deception were stamped on it in bold letters. But Mr. Kuiper merely chucked it into a file basket. He then turned to them. “This is a taut ship. You’ve started by very nearly missing it. That’s a poor start.”