Murray Leinster (12 page)

That was many tides ago, because I dared not return to Honda with so vast a proportion of the gas in my swim-bladder released to the central bubble. I remained not too far below the Surface until my swim-bladder felt normal. I descended again and again waited until my ‘immortal part’ had replenished itself. It is difficult to feed upon such small creatures as inhabit the Heights. It took a long time for me to make the descent which by Morpt’s discovery had been made so readily as an ascent. All my waking time was spent in the capture of food, and I had litde time for meditation. I was never once full-fed in all the periods I paused to wait for my swim-bladder to be replenished. But when I returned to my cave, it had been occupied in my absence by another Shadi. I fed well.

Then came the Peace Tides. And now, having bred, I lay my report of my journey to the Surface at the service of all the Shadi. If I am decreed insane, I shall say no more. But this is my report. Now determine, O Shadi: Am I mad?

is patent nonsense. The psychology of such creatures as described by Sard is of the stuff of dreams.

Therefore, it is the consensus that Sard’s report is not science. He may not be insane, however. The physiological effects Of his admitted journey to great Heights have probably caused disorders in his body which have shown themselves in illusions. The scientific lessons to be learned from this report is that journeys to the Heights, though possible because of the exercises invented by myself, are extremely unwise and should never be made by Shadi. Given during the Peace Tides…,

Mood. Asimov makes the point
that because of the particular disciplines of SF a good science-fiction writer can produce competent work in
any
field. Leinster was one of the rare exceptions that made the transition the other way. One of the advantages of this was that he was able to bring to his stories a sense of atmosphere that should be - but often is not - inseparable from most SF. Certainly the following item is a very chilly story in every respect.

Far, far out on Pluto, where the sun is only a very bright star and a frozen, airless globe circles in emptiness; far out on Pluto, there was motion. The perpetual faint starlight was abrupdy broken. Yellow lights shone suddenly in a circle, and men in spacesuits waddled to a space tug - absurdly marked
Betsy-Anne
in huge white letters. They climbed up its side and went in the airlock. Presently a faint, jetting glow appeared below its drivetubes. It flared suddenly and the tug lifted, to hover expertly a brief distance above what seemed an unmarred field of frozen atmosphere. But that field heaved and broke. The nose of a Pipeline carrier appeared in the center of a cruciform opening. It thrust through. It stood half its length above the surface of the dead and lifeless planet. The tug drifted above it. Its grapnel dropped down, jetted minute flames, and engaged in the monster towring at the carrier’s bow.

The tug’s drivetubes flared luridly. The carrier heaved abruptly up out of its hidingplace and plunged for the heavens behind the tug. It had a huge classmark and number painted on its side, which was barely visible as it whisked out of sight. It

‘So why aren’t we rich ?’
Nebula Award Stories
8, Victor Gollancz, 1973-went on up at four gravities acceleration, while the spacetug lined out on the most precise of courses and drove fiercely for emptiness.

A long, long time later, when Pluto was barely a pallid disk behind, the tug cast off. The carrier went on, sunward. Its ringed nose pointed unwaveringly to the sun toward which it would drift for years. It was one of a long, long line of carriers drifting through space, a day apart in time but millions of miles apart in distance. They would go on until a tug from Earth came out and grappled them and towed them in to their actual home planet.

But the
Betsy-Arme,
of Pluto, did not pause for contemplation of the two-billion-mile-long line of orecarriers taking the metal of pluto back to Earth. It darted off from the line its late tow now followed. Its radio-locator beam flickered invisibly in emptiness. Presendy its course changed. It turned about. It braked violently, going up to six gravities deceleration for as long as half a minute at a time. Presently it came to rest and there floated toward it an object from Earth, a carrier with great white numerals on its sides. It had been hauled off Earth and flung into an orbit which would fetch it out to Pluto. The
Betsy-Arme’s
grapnel floated toward it and jetted tiny sparks until the towring was engaged. Then the tug and its new tow from Earth started back to Pluto.

There were two long lines of white-numbered carriers floating sedately through space. One line drifted tranquilly in to Earth. One drifted no less tranquilly out past the orbits of six planets to reach the closed-in, underground colony of the mines on Pluto.

Together they made up the Pipeline.

The evening Moon-rocket took off over to the north and went straight up to the zenith. Its blue-white rocket-flare changed color as it fell behind, until the tail-end was a deep, rich crimson. The Pipeline docks were silent, now, but opposite the yard the row of flimsy eating-and drinking-places rattled and thuttered to themselves from the lower-than-sound vibrations of the Moon-ship.

There was a youngish, battered man named Hill in the Pluto Bar, opposite the docks. He paid no attention to the Moon-rocket, but he looked up sharply as a man came out of the Pipeline gate and came across the street toward the bar. But Hill was staring at his drink when the door opened and the man from the dock looked the small dive over. Besides Hill - who looked definitely tough, and as if he had but recently recovered from a ravaging illness - there was only the bartender, a catawheel-truck driver and his girl having a drink together, and another man at a table by himself and fidgeting nervously as if he were waiting for someone. Hill’s eyes flickered again to the man in the door. He looked suspicious. But then he looked back at his glass.

The other man came in and went to the bar.

‘Evenin’, Mr. Crowder,’ said the bartender.

Hill’s eyes darted up, and down again. The bartender reached below the bar, filled a glass, and slid it across the mahogany.

‘Evenin’,’ said Crowder curtly. He looked deliberately at the fidgety man. He seemed to note that the fidgety man was alone. He gave no sign of recognition, but his features pinched a litde, as some men’s do when they feel a little, crawling unease. But there was nothing WTong except that the fidgety man seemed to be upset because he was waiting for someone who hadn’t come.

Crowder sat down in a booth, alone. Hill waited a moment, looked sharply about him, and then stood up. He crossed purposefully to the booth in which Crowder sat.

‘I’m lookin’ for a fella named Crowder,’ he said huskily. That’s you, ain’t it?’

Crowder looked at him, his face instantly masklike. Hill’s looks matched his voice. There was a scar under one eye. He had a cauliflower ear. He looked battered, and hard-boiled -and as if he had just recovered from some serious injury or illness. His skin was reddened in odd patches.

‘My name is Crowder,’ said Crowder suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

Hill sat down opposite him.

‘My name’s Hill,’ he said in the same husky voicc. ‘There was a guy who was gonna come here tonight. He’d fixed it up to be stowed away on a Pipeline carrier to Pluto. I bought ’im off. I bought his chance. I came here to take his place.’

‘1
don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Crowder coldly.

But he did. Hill could see that he did. His stomach-muscles knotted. He was uneasy. Hill’s gaze grew scornful.

‘You’re the night super of th’ Pipeline yards, ain’t you?’ he demanded truculently.

Crowder’s face stayed masklike. Hill looked tough. He looked like the sort of yegg who’d get into trouble with the police because he’d never think things out ahead. He knew it, and he didn’t care. Because he had gotten in trouble - often -because he didn’t think things out ahead. But he wasn’t that way tonight. He’d planned tonight in detail.

‘Sure I’m the night superintendent of the Pipeline yards,’ said Crowder shordy. ‘I came over for a drink. I’m going back. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Hill’s eyes grew hard.

‘Listen, fella,’ he said truculently - but he had been really ill, and the signs of it were plain - ‘they’re payin’ five hundred credits a day in the mines out on Pluto, ain’t they? A guy works a year out there, he comes back rich, don’t he?’

‘Sure!’ said Crowder. ‘The wages got set by law when it cost a lot to ship supplies out. Before the Pipeline got going.’

‘An’ they ain’t got enough guys to work, have they?’

‘There’s a shortage,’ agreed Crowder coldly. ‘Everybody knows it. The liners get fifty thousand credits for a one-way passage, and it takes six months for the trip.’

Hill nodded, truculently.

‘I wanna get out to Pluto,’ he said huskily. ‘See? They don’t ask too many questions about a guy when he turns up out there. But the space liners, they do, an’ they want too many credits. So I wanna go out in a carrier by Pipeline. See?’

Hill downed his drink and stood up.

‘There’s a law,’ he said uncompromisingly, ‘that says the Pipeline can’t carry passengers or mail. The spacelines j
amm
ed that through. Politics.’

‘Maybe/ said Hill pugnaciously,
but you promised to let a guy stow away on the carrier tonight He told me about it. I paid him off. He sold me his place. I’m takin’ it, see?’

‘I’m night superintendent at the yards,’ Crowder told him. ‘If there are arrangements for stowaways, I don’t know about them. You’re talking to the wrong man.’

He abrupdy left the table. He walked across the room to the fidgety man, who seemed more and more uneasy because somebody hadn’t turned up. Crowder’s eyes were viciously angry when he bent over the fidgety man.

‘Look here, Moore!’ he said savagely, in a low tone. ‘That guy is on! He says he paid your passenger to let him take his place. That’s why your man hasn’t showed up. You picked him out and he sold his place to this guy. So I’m leaving it right in your lap! I can lie myself clear. They couldn’t get any evidence back, anyhow. Not for years yet. But what he told me is straight, he’s got to go or he’ll shoot off his mouth! So it’s in your lap!’

The eyes of Moore - the fidgety man - had a hunted look in them. He swallowed as if his mouth were dry. But he nodded.

Crowder went out Hill scowled after him. After a moment he came over to Moore.

‘Lookahere/ he said huskily. ‘I wanna know somethin’. That guy’s night super for Pipeline, ain’t he?’

Moore nodded. He licked his lips.

‘Lissen!’ said Hill angrily, ‘there’s a Pipeline carrier leaves here every day for Pluto, an’ one comes in from Pluto every day. It’s just like gettin’ on a ’copter an’ goin’ from one town to another on the Pipeline, ain’t it?’

Moore nodded again - this time almost unnoticeably.

‘That’s what a guy told me/ said Hill pugnaciously. ‘He said he’d got it all fixed up to stow away on a carrier-load of grub. He said he’d paid fifteen hundred credits to have it fixed up. He was gonna leave tonight. I paid him off to let me take his place. Now this guy Crowder tells me I’m crazy!’

‘I … wouldn’t know anything about it/ said Moore, hesitantly. ‘I know Crowder, but that’s all.’

Hill growled to himself. He doubled up his fist and looked at it. It was a capable fist. There were scars on it as proof that things had been hit with it.

‘O.K.!’ said Hill. ‘I guess that guy kidded me. He done me outta plenty credits. I know where to find him. He’s goin’ to a hospital!’

He stirred, scowling.

‘W-wait a minute,’ said Moore. ”It seems to me I heard something, once—’

Carriers drifted on through space. They were motorless, save for the tiny drives for the gyros in their noses. They were a hundred feet long, and twenty feet thick, and some of them contained foodstuffs in air-sealed containers - because everything will freeze, in space, but even ice will evaporate in a vacuum. Some carried drums of rocket fuel for the tugs and heaters and the generators for the mines on Pluto. Some contained tools and books and visiphone records and caviar and explosives and glue and cosmetics for the women on Pluto! But all of them drifted slowly, leisurely, unhurriedly, upon their two-billion-mile journey.

They were the Pipeline. You put a carrier into the line at Earth, headed out to Pluto. The same day you took a carrier out of space at the end of the line, at Pluto. You put one into the Earth-bound line, on Pluto. You took one out of space the same day, on Earth. There was continuous traffic between the two planets, with daily arrivals and departures from each. But passenger-traffic between Earth and Pluto went by space liners, at a fare of fifty thousand credits for the trip. Because even the liners took six months for the joumey, and the Pipeline carriers

- well, there were over twelve hundred of them in each line going each way, a day apart in time and millions of miles apart in space. They were very lonely, those long cylinders with their white-painted numbers on their sides. The stars were the only eyes to look upon the while they traveled, and it took three years to drift from one end of the pipeline to the other.

But nevertheless there were daily arrivals and departures on the Pipeline, and there was continuous traffic between the two planets.