Murray Leinster (13 page)

Moore turned away from the pay-visiphone, into which he had talked in a confidential murmur while the screen remained blank. The pugnacious, battered Hill scowled impatiently behind him.

‘I’m not sure/ said Moore uneasily. ‘I talked to somebody I thought might know something, but they’re cagey. They’d lose their jobs and maybe get in worse trouble if anybody finds out they’re smuggling stowaways to Pluto. Y’see, the space lines have a big pull in politics. They’ve got it fixed so the Pipeline can’t haul anything but freight. If people could travel by Pipeline, the space liners ’ud go broke. So they watch close.’

He looked uneasy as he spoke. His eyes watched Hill almost alarmedly. But Hill said sourly:

‘O.K.! I’m gonna find the guy that sold me his place, an’ I’m gonna write a message on him with a blowtorch. The docs’ll have fun readin’ him, an’ why he’s in the hospital!
Moore swallowed.

‘Who was it? I’ve heard something—’

Hill bit off the name. Moore swallowed again - as if the name meant something. As if it were right.

‘I ^. v I’ll tell you, guy,’ said Moore. ‘It’s none of my business, but I.. -. well… I might be able to fix things up for you. It’s risky, though, butting in on something that ain’t my business—’

^!
How much?’ said Hill shortly.

‘Oh … f-five hundred,’ said Moore uneasily.

Hill stared at him. Hard. Then he pulled a roll out of his pocket. He displayed it.

‘I got credits,’ he said huskily. ‘But I’m givin’ you just one hundred of ’em. I’ll give you nine hundred more when I’m all set. That’s twice what you asked for. But that’s all, see? I got a reason to get off Earth, an’ tonight, I’ll pay to manage it. But if I’m double-crossed, somebody gets hurt!’

Moore grinned nervously.;

‘No double-crossing in this/ he said quickly. ‘Just … well … it is ticklish.’

‘Yeah/ said Hill. He waved a battered-knuckled hand. ‘Get goin’. Tell those guys I’m willin’ to pay. But I get stowed away, or I’ll fix that guy who sold me his place so he’ll tell all he knows! I’m goin’ to Pluto, or else!’

Moore said cautiously:

‘M-maybe you’ll have to pay out a little more … but not much! But you’ll get there! I’ve heard … just heard, you understand … that the gang here smuggles a fella into the Pipeline yard and up into the nose of a carrier loaded with grub. Champagne and all that. He can live high on the way, and not worry because out on Pluto they’re so anxious to get a man to work that they’ll square tilings. They need men bad, out on Pluto! They pay five hundred credits a day!’

‘Yeah/ said Hill grimly. ‘They need ’em so bad there ain’t no extradition either. I’m int’rested in that, too. Now get goin’ an’ fix me up!’

The Pipeline was actually a two-billion-mile arrangement of specks in infinity. Each of the specks was a carrier. Each of the carriers was motorless and inert. Each was unlighted. Each was lifeless. But - some of them had contained life when they started.

The last carrier out from Earth, to be sure, contained nothing but its proper cargo of novelties, rocket fuel, canned goods and plastic base. But in the one beyond that, there was what had been a hopeful stowaway. A man, with his possessions neatly piled about him. He’d been placed up in the nose of the carrier, and he’d waited, mousy-still, until the space tug connected with the tow ring and heaved the carrier out to the beginning of the Pipeline. As a stowaway, he hadn’t wanted to be discovered. The carrier ahead of that - many millions of miles farther out -contained two girls, who had heard that stenographers were highly paid on Pluto, and that there were so few women that a girl might take her pick of husbands. The one just before that had a man and woman in it. There were four men in the carrier beyond them.

The hundred-foot cylinders drifting out and out and out toward Pluto contained many stowaways. The newest of them still looked quite human. They looked quite tranquil. After all, when a carrier is hauled aloft at four gravities acceleration the air flows out of the bilge-valves very quickly, but the cold comes in more quickly still. None of the stowaways had actually suffocated. They’d frozen so suddenly they probably did not realize what was happening. At sixty thousand feet the temperature is around seventy degrees below zero. At a hundred and twenty thousand feet it’s so cold that figures simply haven’t any meaning. And at four gravities acceleration you reach a hundred and twenty thousand feet before you’ve really grasped the fact that you paid all your money to be flung unprotected into space. So you never quite realize that you’re going on out into a vacuum which will gradually draw every atom of moisture from every tissue of your body.

But, though there were many stowaways, not one had yet reached Pluto. They would do so in time, of course. But the practice of smuggling stowaways to Pluto had only been in operation for a year and a half. The first of the deluded ones had not quite passed the halfway mark. So the stowaway business should be safe and profitable for at least a year and a half more. Then it would be true that a passenger entered the Pipeline from Earth and a passenger reached Pluto on the same day. But it would not be the same passenger, and there would be other differences. Even then, though, the racket would simply stop being profitable, because there was no extradition either to or from Pluto.

So the carriers drifting out through emptiness with their stowaways were rather ironic, in a way. There were tragedies within them, and nothing could be done about them. It was ironic that the carriers gave no sign of the freight they bore< They moved quite sedately, quite placidly, with a vast leisure among the stars.

The battered youngish man said coldly: ‘Well? You fixed it?’

Moore grinned nervously.

^s
Yeah. It’s all fixed. At first they thought you might be an undercover man for the passenger lines, trying to catch the Pipeline smuggling passengers so they could get its charter canceled. But they called up the man whose place you took, and it’s straight. He said he gave you his place and told you to see Crowder.’

Hill said angrily:

‘But he stalled me!’

Moore licked his lips.

-You’ll get the picture in a minute. We cross the street and go in the Pipeline yard. You have to slip the guard something. A hundred credits for looking the other way.’

Hill growled:

‘No more stalling!’

‘No more stalling,’ promised Moore. ‘You go out to Pluto in the next carrier.’

They went out of the Pluto Bar. They crossed the street, which was thin, black, chumed-up mud from the catawheel trucks which hauled away each day’s arrival of freight from Pluto. They moved direcdy and openly for the gateway. The guard strolled toward them.

‘Slim,’ said Moore, grinning nervously, ‘meet my friend Hill.’

‘Sure!’ said the guard.

He extended his hand, palm up. Hill put a hundred-credit note in it.

‘O.K.,’ said the guard. ‘Luck on Pluto, fella.’

He turned his back. Moore snickered almost hysterically and led the way into the dark recesses of the yard. There was the landing field for the space tugs. There were six empty carriers off to one side. There was one in a loading pit, sunk down on a hydraulic platform until only its nose now showed aboveground. It could be loaded in its accelerating position, that way, and would not need to be upended after reaching maximum weight.

‘Takeoff is half an hour before sunrise today,’ said Moore jerkily. ‘You’ll know when it’s coming because the hydraulic platform shoves the carrier up out of the pit. Then you’ll hear the grapnel catching in the towring. Then you start. The tug puts you in the Pipeline and hangs around and picks up the other carrier coming back.’

‘That’s speed!’ said Hill. ‘Them scientists are great stuff, huh? I start off in that, an’ before I know it I’m on Pluto’!

‘Yeah,’ said Moore. He smirked with a twitching, ghastly effect. ‘Before you know it. Here’s the door where you go in.’ Crowder came around the other side of the carrier’s cone-shaped nose. He scowled at Hill, and Hill scowled back.

‘You sounded phony to me,’ said Crowder ungraciously. ‘I wasn’t going to take any chances by admitting anything. Moore told you it’s going to cost you extra?’

‘For what?’ demanded Hill, bristling.

‘Because you’ve got to get away fast,’ said Crowder evenly. ‘Because there’s no extradition from Pluto. We’re not in this for our health. Two thousand credits more.’

Hill snarled:

‘Thief—’ Then he said sullenly. ‘O.K.’

‘And my nine hundred,’ said Moore eagerly.

‘Sure,’ said Hill, sardonically. He paid. ‘O.K. now? Whadda I do now?’

‘Go in the door here,’ said Crowder. ‘The cargo’s grub. Get comfortable and lay flat on your back when you feel the carrier coming up to be hitched on for towing. After the acceleration’s over and you’re in the Pipeline, do as you please.’

‘Yeah!’ said Moore, giggling nervously. ‘Do just as you please.’

Hill said tonelessly:

‘Right. I’ll start now.’

He moved with a savage,
inf
uriated swiftness. There was a queer, muffled cracking sound. Then a starded gasp from Moore, a moment’s struggle, and another sharp crack.

Hill went into the nose of the carrier. He dragged them in. He stayed inside for minutes. He came out and listened, swinging a leather blackjack meditatively. Then he went over to the gate. He called cautiously to the guard.

‘You! Slim! Crowder says come quick - an’ quiet! Somethin’s happened an’ him an’ Moore got their hands full.’

The guard blinked, and then came quickly. Hill hurried behind him to the loading pit. As the guard called tensely: ‘Hey, Crowder, what’s the matter—’

Hill swung the blackjack again, with a certain deft precision. The guard collapsed.

A little later Hill had finished his work. The three men were bound with infinite science. They not only could not escape, they could not even kick. That’s quite a trick - but it can be done if you study the art. And they were not only gagged, bur there was tape over their mouths beyond the gag, so that they could not even make a respectable groaning noise. And Hill surveyed the three of them by the light of a candle he had taken from his pocket - as he had taken the rope from about his waist

- and said in husky satisfaction:

‘O.K. O.K.! I’m givin’ you fellas some bad news. You’re headin’ out to Pluto.’

Terror close to madness shone in the three pairs of eyes which fixed frantically upon him. The eyes seemed to threaten to start from their sockets.

‘It ain’t so bad,’ said Hill grimly. ‘Not like you think it is. You’ll get there before you know it. No kidding! You’ll go snakin’ up at four gravities, an’ the air’ll go out. But you won’t die of that. Before you strangle, you’ll freeze - an’ fast! You’ll freeze so fast y’won’t have time to die, fellas. That’s the funny part. You freeze so quick you ain’t got time to die! The Space Patrol found out a year or so back that that can happen, when things are just right - an’ they will be, for you. So the Space Patrol will be all set to bring you back, when y’ get to Pluto. But it does hurt, fellas. It hurts like hell! I oughta know!’

He grinned at them, his mouth twisted and his eyes grim.

‘I paid you fellas to send me out to Pluto last year. But it happened I didn’t get to Pluto. The Patrol dragged my carrier out o’ the Pipeline an’ over to Callisto because they hadda shortage o’ rocket fuel there. So I’ been through it, an’ it hurts! I wouldn’t tell on you fellas, because I wanted you to have it, so I took my bawlin’ out for stowin’ away an’ come back to send you along. So you’ goin’, fellas! An’ you’ goin’ all the way to

Pluto! And remember this, fellas! It’s gonna be good! After they bring you back, out there on Pluto, every fella an’ every soul you sent off as stowaways, they’ll be there on Pluto waitin’ for you. It’s gonna be good, guys! It’s gonna be good! ’

He looked at them in the candlelight, and seemed to take a vast satisfaction in their expressions. Then he blew out the candle, and closed the nose door of the carrier, and went away.

And half an hour before sunrise next morning the hydraulic platform pushed the carrier up, and a space tug hung expertly overhead and its grapnel came down and hooked in the towring, and then the carrier jerked skyward at four gravities acceleration.

Far out from Earth, the carrier went on, the latest of a long line of specks in infinity which constituted the Pipeline to Pluto. Many of those specks contained things which had been human - and would be human again. But now each one drifted sedately away from the sun, and in the later carriers the stowaways still looked completely human and utterly tranquil. What had happened to them had come so quickly that they did not realize what it was. But in the last carrier of all, with three bound, gagged figures in its nose, the expressions were not tranquil at all. Because those men did know what had happened to them. More - they knew what was yet to come.

SAM, THIS IS YOU

Romance. Because of his association with the general-fiction market Leinster was more at home in this area than were most of his contemporaries. Doc ‘Lensman’ Smith, who had to have his love scenes written for him, was at least being honest in his recognition that SF & romance can be an oil-and-waier mix. Even Leinster preferred to avoid problems by spicing his love-interest with humor, as in his familiar
^l
Fourth Dimensional Demonstrator
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However, the following lesser-known story is very definitely a more craftsman-like piece of work.