Methuselah's Children Read online

  Well, there was only one way to beat that, and that was to call the Department of Safety himself and, somehow, get the Chief Provost on the screen-after that he would play by ear.

  "Department of Civil Safety," a voice answered. "What service, citizen?"

  "Service to you," he began in his best control-bridge voice. "I am Captain Sheffield. Give me the Chief." He was not overbearing; his manner simply assumed obedience.

  Short silence-"What is it about, please?"

  "I said I was Captain Sheffield." This time Lazarus' voice showed restrained annoyance.

  Another short pause-"I'll connect you with the Chief Deputy's office," the voice said doubtfully.

  This time the screen came to life. "Yes?" asked the Chief Deputy, looking him over.

  "Get me the Chief-hurry."

  "What's it about?"

  "Good Lord, man-get me the Chief! I'm Captain Sheffield!"

  The Chief Deputy must be excused for connecting him; he had had no sleep and more confusing things had happened in the last twenty-four hours than he had been able to assimilate. When the High Chief Provost appeared in the screen, Lazarus spoke first. "Oh, there you are! I've had the damnedest time cutting through your red tape. Get me the Old Man and move! Use your closed circuit."

  "What the devil do you mean? Who are you?"

  "Listen, brother," said Lazarus in tones of slow exasperation, "I would not have routed through your damned hidebound department if I hadn't been in a jam. Cut me in to the Old Man. This is about the Howard Families."

  The police chief was instantly alert. "Make your report."

  "Look," said Lazarus in tired tones, "I know you would like to look over the Old Man's shoulder, but this isn't a good time to try. If you obstruct me and force me to waste two hours by reporting in corpus, I will. But the Old Man will want to know why and you can bet your pretty parade kit, I'll tell him."

  The Chief Provost decided to take a chance-cut this character in on a three-way; then, if the Old Man didn't burn this joker off the screen in about three seconds, he'd know he had played safe and guessed lucky. If he did-well, you could always blame it on a cross-up in communications. He set the combo.

  Administrator Ford looked flabbergasted when he recognized Lazarus in the screen. "You?" he exclaimed. "How on Earth-Did Zaccur Barstow-"

  "Seal your circuit!" Lazarus cut in.

  The Chief Provost blinked as his screen went dead and silent. So the Old Man did have secret agents outside the department . . . interesting-and not to be forgotten.

  Lazarus gave Ford a quick and fairly honest account of how he happened to be at large, then added, "So you see, I could have gone to cover and escaped entirely. In fact I still can. But I want to know this: is the deal with Zaccur Barstow to let us emigrate still on?"

  "Yes, it is."

  "Have you figured out how you are going to get a hundred thousand people inboard the New Frontiers without tipping your hand? You can't trust your own people, you know that."

  "I know. The present situation is a temporary expedient while we work it out."

  "And I'm the man for the job. I've got to be, I'm the only agent on the loose that either one of you can afford to trust. Now listen-"

  Eight minutes later Ford was nodding his head slowly and saying, "It might work. It might. Anyway, you start your preparations. I'll have a letter of credit waiting for you at Goddard."

  "Can you cover your tracks on that? I can't flash a letter of credit from the Administrator; people would wonder."

  "Credit me with some intelligence. By the time it reaches you it will appear to be a routine banking transaction."

  "Sorry. Now how can I get through to you when I need to?"

  "Oh, yes-note this code combination." Ford recited it slowly. "That puts you through to my desk without relay. No, don't write it down; memorize it."

  "And how can I talk to Zack Barstow?"

  "Call me and I'll hook you in. You can't call him directly unless you can arrange a sensitive circuit."

  "Even if I could, I can't cart a sensitive around with me. Well, cheerio-I'm clearing."

  "Good luck!"

  Lazarus left the phone booth with restrained haste and hurried back to reclaim his hired ship. He did not know enough about current police practice to guess whether or not the High Chief Provost had traced the call to the Administrator; he simply took it for granted because he himself would have done so in the Provost's shoes. Therefore the nearest available proctor was probably stepping on his heels-time to move, time to mess up the trail a little.

  He took off again and headed west, staying in the local, uncontrolled low level until he reached a cloud bank that walled the western horizon. He then swung back and cut air for Kansas City, staying carefully under the speed limit and flying as low as local traffic regulations permitted. At Kansas City he turned his ship in to the local U-push-it agency and flagged a ground taxi, which carried him down the controlway to Joplin. There he boarded a local jet bus from St. Louis without buying a ticket first, thereby insuring that his flight would not be recorded until the bus's trip records were turned in on the west coast.

  Instead of worrying he spent the time making plans.

  One hundred thousand people with an average mass of a hundred and fifty-no, make it a hundred and sixty pounds, Lazarus reconsidered-a hundred and sixty each made a load of sixteen million pounds, eight thousand tons. The I Spy could boost such a load against one gravity but she would be as logy as baked beans. It was out of the question anyhow; people did not stow like cargo; the I Spy could lift that dead weight-but "dead" was the word, for that was what they would be.

  He needed a transport.

  Buying a passenger ship big enough to ferry the Families from Earth up to where the New Frontiers hung in her construction orbit was not difficult; Four Planets Passenger Service would gladly unload such a ship at a fair price. Passenger trade competition being what it was, they were anxious to cut their losses on older ships no longer popular with tourists. But a passenger ship would not do; not only would there be unhealthy curiosity in what he intended to do with such a ship, but-and this settled it-he could not pilot it single-handed. Under the Revised Space Precautionary Act, passenger ships were required to be built for human control throughout on the theory that no automatic safety device could replace human judgment in an emergency.

  It would have to be a freighter.

  Lazarus knew the best place to find one. Despite efforts to make the Moon colony ecologically self-sufficient, Luna City still imported vastly more tonnage than she exported. On Earth this would have resulted in "empties coming back"; in space transport it was sometimes cheaper to let empties accumulate, especially on Luna where an empty freighter was worth more as metal than it had cost originally as a ship back Earthside.

  He left the bus when it landed at Goddard City, went to the space field, paid his bills, and took possession of the I Spy, filed a request for earliest available departure for Luna. The slot he was assigned was two days from then, but Lazarus did not let it worry him; he simply went back to the docking company and indicated that he was willing to pay liberally for a swap in departure time. In twenty minutes he had oral assurance that he could boost for Luna that evening.

  He spent the remaining several hours in the maddening red tape of interplanetary clearance. He first picked up the letter of credit Ford had promised him and converted it into cash. Lazarus would have been quite willing to use a chunk of the cash to speed up his processing just as he had paid (quite legally) for a swap in slot with another ship. But he found himself unable to do so. Two centuries of survival had taught him that a bribe must be offered as gently and as indirectly as a gallant suggestion is made to a proud lady; in a very few minutes he came to the glum conclusion that civic virtue and public honesty could be run into the ground-the functionaries at Goddard Field seemed utterly innocent of the very notion of cumshaw, squeeze, or the lubricating effect of money in routine transactions. He admired thei
r incorruptibility; he did not have to like it-most especially when filling out useless forms cost him the time he had intended to devote to a gourmet's feast in the Skygate Room.

  He even let himself be vaccinated again rather than go back to the I Spy and dig out the piece of paper that showed he had been vaccinated on arrival Earthside a few weeks earlier.

  Nevertheless, twenty minutes before his revised slot time, he lay at the controls of the I Spy, his pouch bulging with stamped papers and his stomach not bulging with the sandwich he had managed to grab. He had worked out the "Hohmann's-S" trajectory he would use; the results had been fed into the autopilot. All the lights on his board were green save the one which would blink green when field control started his count down. He waited in the warm happiness that always filled him when about to boost.

  A thought hit him and he raised up against his straps. Then he loosened the chest strap and sat up, reached for his copy of the current Terra Pilot and Traffic Hazards Supplement. Mmm. . .

  New Frontiers hung in a circular orbit of exactly twenty-four hours, keeping always over meridian 106° west at declination zero at a distance from Earth center of approximately twenty-six thousand miles.

  Why not pay her a call, scout out the lay of the land?

  The I Spy, with tanks topped off and cargo spaces empty, had many mile-seconds of reserve boost To be sure, the field had cleared him for Luna City, not for the interstellar ship . . . but, with the Moon in its present phase, the deviation from his approved flight pattern would hardly show on a screen, probably would not be noticed until the film record was analyzed at some later time-at which time Lazarus would receive a traffic citation, perhaps even have his license suspended. But traffic tickets had never worried him . . . and it was certainly worthwhile to reconnoitre.

  He was already setting up the problem in his ballistic calculator. Aside from checking the orbit elements of the New Frontiers in the Terra Pilot Lazarus could have done it in his sleep; satellite-matching maneuvers were old hat for any pilot and a doubly-tangent trajectory for a twenty-four hour orbit was one any student pilot knew by heart.

  He fed the answers into his autopilot during the count down, finished with three minutes to spare, strapped himself down again and relaxed as the acceleration hit him. When the ship went into free fall, he checked his position and vector via the field's transponder. Satisfied, he locked his board, set the alarm for rendezvous, and went to sleep.

  6

  About four hours later the alarm woke him. He switched it off; it continued to ring-a glance at his screen showed him why. The Gargantuan cylindrical body of the New Frontiers lay close aboard. He switched off the radar alarm circuit as well and completed matching with her by the seat of his pants, not bothering with the ballistic calculator. Before he had completed the maneuver the communications alarm started beeping. He slapped a switch; the rig hunted frequencies and the vision screen came to life. A man looked at him. "New Frontiers calling: what ship are you?"

  "Private vessel I Spy, Captain Sheffield. My compliments to your commanding officer. May I come inboard to pay a call?"

  They were pleased to have visitors. The ship was completed save for inspection, trials, and acceptance; the enormous gang which had constructed her had gone to Earth and there was no one aboard but the representatives of the Jordan Foundation and a half dozen engineers employed by the corporation which had been formed to build the ship for the foundation. These few were bored with inactivity, bored with each other, anxious to quit marking time and get back to the pleasures of Earth; a visitor was a welcome diversion.

  When the I Spy's airlock had been sealed to that of the big ship, Lazarus was met by the engineer in charge-technically "captain" since the New Frontiers was a ship under way even though not under power. He introduced himself and took Lazarus on a tour of the ship. They floated through miles of corridors, visited laboratories, storerooms, libraries containing hundreds of thousands of spools, acres of hydroponic tanks for growing food and replenishing oxygen, and comfortable, spacious, even luxurious quarters for a crew colony of ten thousand people. "We believe that the Vanguard expedition was somewhat undermanned," the skipper-engineer explained. "The sociodynamicists calculate that this colony will be able to maintain the basics of our present level of culture."

  "Doesn't sound like enough," Lazarus commented. "Aren't there more than ten thousand types of specialization?"

  "Oh, certainly! But the idea is to provide experts in all basic arts and indispensable branches of knowledge. Then, as the colony expands, additional specializations can be added through the aid of the reference libraries-anything from tap-dancing to tapestry weaving. That's the general idea though it's out of my line. Interesting subject, no doubt, for those who like it."

  "Are you anxious to get started?" asked Lazarus.

  The man looked almost shocked. "Me? D'you mean to suggest that I would go in this thing? My dear sir, I'm an engineer, not a damn' fool."

  "Sorry."

  "Oh, I don't mind a reasonable amount of spacing when there's a reason for it-I've been to Luna City more times than I can count and I've even been to Venus. But you don't think the man who built the Mayflower sailed in her, do you? For my money the only thing that will keep these people who signed up for it from going crazy before they get there is that it's a dead cinch they're all crazy before they start."

  Lazarus changed the subject. They did not dally in the main drive space, nor in the armored cell housing the giant atomic converter, once Lazarus learned that they were unmanned, fully-automatic types. The total absence of moving parts in each of these divisions, made possible by recent developments in parastatics, made their inner workings of intellectual interest only, which could wait. What Lazarus did want to see was the control room, and there he lingered, asking endless questions until his host was plainly bored and remaining only out of politeness.

  Lazarus finally shut up, not because he minded imposing on this host but because he was confident that he had learned enough about the controls to be willing to chance conning the ship.

  He picked up two other important data before he left the ship: in nine Earth days the skeleton crew was planning a weekend on Earth, following which the acceptance trials would be held. But for three days the big ship would be empty, save possibly for a communications operator-Lazarus was too wary to be inquisitive on this point. But there would be no guard left in her because no need for a guard could be imagined. One might as well guard the Mississippi River.

  The other thing he learned was how to enter the ship from the outside without help from the inside; he picked that datum up through watching the mail rocket arrive just as he was about to leave the ship.

  At Luna City, Joseph McFee, factor for Diana Terminal Corp., subsidiary of Diana Freight Lines, welcomed Lazarus warmly. "Well! Come in, Cap'n, and pull up a chair. What'll you drink?" He was already pouring as he talked-tax-free paint-remover from his own amateur vacuum still. "Haven't seen you in . . . well, too long. Where d'you raise from last and what's the gossip there? Heard any new ones?"

  "From Goddard," Lazarus answered and told him what the skipper had said to the V.I.P. McFee answered with the one about the old maid in free fall, which Lazarus pretended not to have heard. Stories led to politics, and McFee expounded his notion of the "only possible solution" to the European questions, a solution predicated on a complicated theory of McFee's as to why the Covenant could not be extended to any culture below a certain level of industrialization. Lazarus did not give a hoot either way but he knew better than to hurry McFee; he nodded at the right places, accepted more of the condemned rocket juice when offered, and waited for the right moment to come to the point.

  "Any company ships for sale now, Joe?"

  "Are there? I should hope to shout. I've got more steel sitting out on that plain and cluttering my inventory than I've had in ten years. Looking for some? I can make you a sweet price."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. Depends on whether you've got what I wa
nt."

  "You name it, I've got it. Never saw such a dull market. Some days you can't turn an honest credit." McFee frowned. "You know what the trouble is? Well, I'll tell you-it's this Howard Families commotion. Nobody wants to risk any money until he knows where he stands. How can a man make plans when he doesn't know whether to plan for ten years or a hundred? You mark my words: if the administration manages to sweat the secret loose from those babies, you'll see the biggest boom in long-term investments ever. But if not . . . well, long-term holdings won't be worth a peso a dozen and there will be an eat-drink-and-be-merry craze that will make the Reconstruction look like a tea party."

  He frowned again. "What kind of metal you looking for?"

  "I don't want metal, I want a ship."

  McFee's frown disappeared, his eyebrows shot up. "So? What sort?"

  "Can't say exactly. Got time to look 'em over with me?"

  They suited up and left the dome by North Tunnel, then strolled around grounded ships in the long, easy strides of low gravity. Lazarus soon saw that just two ships had both the lift and the air space needed. One was a tanker and the better buy, but a mental calculation showed him that it lacked deck space, even including the floor plates of the tanks, to accommodate eight thousand tons of passengers. The other was an older ship with cranky piston-type injection meters, but she was fitted for general merchandise and had enough deck space. Her payload was higher than necessary for the job, since passengers weigh little for the cubage they clutter-but that would make her lively, which might be critically important.

  As for the injectors, he could baby them-he had herded worse junk than this.