Rocket from Infinity (6 page)

That
but
was most eloquent. The clerk was really saying, Why bother? Unless a criminal act or a criminal conspiracy could be glaringly proven, the duly filed prior claim was invariably favored. And even then the investigation took so long that a man could grow old waiting for a decision.

Pete stared at the offending claim form. Then he said, “I'll have to think this over,” and walked slowly out of the claim office.

The bald theft shocked him to a point where he forgot a gesture that should have been automatic—he did not snap on his heat unit. Five steps beyond the door the hundred-degree-minus temperature of the Belt hit him like a steel wall. He came out of his daze and snapped on the unit, but after he got back into his monocar it still took five minutes to get the deep chill out of his bones.

His normal blood flow having returned, he tuned his radio into the public channel and sent out the Mason call letters.

Betcha's rasping voice came back to him. “Pete? Where the devil are you? Why didn't you wake me up? Your Dad's worried because you went out without breakfast.”

“Is Dad awake?”

“Awake? He's trying to crawl out of that cast.”

“Let me talk to him.”

There was a pause and Joe Mason's voice cut in. “What is it, son?”

“Our claim was jumped.”

Under the old circumstances that would have been enough to bring Joe Mason roaring onto Parma with all jets blazing. Even now, he didn't take the news casually. “Jumped? What sneaking son of a renegade asteroid had the nerve to jump a Mason claim?”

“Take it easy, Dad. There's no point in getting excited. Just quiet down and I'll tell you about it.”

Pete sensed the effort his father exerted in complying with the suggestion. “All right, son. So we got jumped. Tell me about it.”

“I just came from the office. The claim was filed this morning. Three men were waiting when the clerk opened up.”

“Who were they?”

“Uncle Homer signed the affidavit. That's Homer Barry, except that his name is—”

“Deeds!”

“You knew that?”

“Certainly. I've known it for years. But what difference does it make? You're right. He's a Barry and they're all as crooked as a blind man's mine shaft!”

“I'm heading for the
Snapdragon
now. I'm going to have this out once and for all.”

“Wait a minute, son.”

“What do you mean? What's there to wait for?”

Joe Mason's tone and temper had changed. “What did you just tell me? There's no point in getting excited. All right. I want you to take your own advice. Quiet down.”

“Sure I said that. But you're down in bed. What I meant was—”

“You just listen to what I mean—”

“But Dad! We got jumped! We're in the right!”

“Sure. But you can be just as dead as if you were in the wrong. A bullet doesn't care who it hits.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Use your head, Pete! Aren't these sure to be the same men you heard about at the meeting? They've already shot one miner. And it might have been their ship I saw after I got that load of shale.”

“I've had that in mind for quite a while. Now I'm convinced.”

“All right. But they're dangerous and I don't want you getting hurt. Go to the Brotherhood hall. There are always a few miners hanging around there. Tell them the story and they'll arm themselves and go with you and you can blast your way into the
Snapdragon
and make your own justice.”

Pete was stunned for a second time that day. “Dad! Have you gone crazy? Go out there and turn guns on those kids?”

“No. I haven't gone crazy. But I thought for a minute that you had.”

Jarred back to sober thinking, Pete's sense of humor came to his rescue as his imagination conjured up a picture of little Colleen poking a gun through the airlock of the
Snapdragon
and letting him have it.

“What are you chuckling at?” Joe Mason asked.

“Nothing Dad. But you're right. We've got to be sensible about this thing. What do you want me to do?”

There was a long pause. Pete wondered if his father had heard him. Then, just as he was about to repeat the question, Joe Mason replied. He spoke very quietly. “I'm leaving that up to you, son.”

“But Dad—”

“When I said you had to take over for the Masons, I didn't mean I wanted you to just be my messenger boy, doing what I tell you to do. You make the decisions now. I'll back you in anything you do—and I mean anything. If you decide violence is the answer, Betcha and the men and I will back the play. It's up to you.”

“You don't think it's a good idea, though.”

“No.”

“Then what do you…?”

“I'll give you advice—if you ask for it.”

“No,” Pete replied suddenly and definitely. “Let me think it over first.”

“That's the idea. Sit back and sort things out in your mind and then make your decision.”

“I'll call you back, Dad. In the meantime, see to it that Betcha doesn't go out on a rampage and get himself killed.”

“Right, son. I'll keep him under control.”

Pete cut out of the channel, warmed by the pride in his father's voice. Then he sat back in the monocar seat and applied himself totally to the problem.

The first thought that came to him was his confusion as to Homer Deed's exact relationship with the Barrys. He was considered to be a member of the Barry clan and yet—even with what had happened—Pete couldn't see the other Barrys as openly criminal claim jumpers. He'd gotten a certain insight into Jane Barry's character and personality during the short time they'd been together, and he felt he had at least a clue to the situation. But how should he proceed?

He could go straight to the authorities and lodge a formal complaint. That would put the whole matter out of his hands and he could sit back—perhaps for months—and see what developed. Or he could face Homer directly and make a personal issue of the theft.

He knew that was what his father would have done in the old days. But it was also what he now advised against. Or did he? Perhaps not. Maybe he only wanted Pete to be sure of himself.

Then another thought—a somewhat happier one—struck Pete. He rolled it around in his mind. He liked it. He grinned. Then, turning from thought to action, he left the monocar and went back into the Federation building.

But to a different office this time. The lettering on the door he opened read:

DEPT. OF SALVAGE
PLANS & CLAIMS

This office was laid out pretty much like the other. The same desk, the same furniture, the same picture of the System Capitol dome on the wall. The only difference was the color of the clerks hair. It was black, but he wore the same expression of martyred exile as did his blond compatriot.

“May I help you?” he asked politely.

“Yes,” Pete replied. “I want to file a claim and a plan of salvage on a monocar.”

“I see. If you'll give me the details, I'll jot down the primary report. A monocar, you say?”

“Yes. I answered a call for help and located the car just off the Badlands.”

“You can give me an exact location later. What was your procedure?”

“I approached the car and found it to be damaged from a collision. Its air had been lost and the steering jets were so badly damaged it was out of control.”

“The car was occupied?”

“Yes. A girl was inside. Her name is Jane Barry.”

That meant nothing to the clerk and Pete automatically concluded he had never seen Jane or it would have meant something.

“What did you do?”

“I grappled onto the car and returned it to its home port.”

“The girl remained in the craft during the trip?”

“Yes.”

The clerk looked up from his jottings. “The rules on salvage are quite detailed. Let me get the manual.”

“Do that.”

The clerk took a heavy volume from under the counter and began thumbing through the pages. Pete knew what the book contained. It listed spaceships, their every component, and their every function. There were listings of ships by size, classification and origin; ships by tonnage, speed, and method of propulsion; ships by content subdivided into live and inanimate; the inanimate cut down into animal, vegetable, or mineral, each heading again reduced to classifications that filled ten pages; the live alternative was under two main heads: Human and Subhuman, these two heads going blithely on for another fifty pages.

In short, the Guide on Salvage Classifications was complete.

“I assume,” the clerk said after studying the Procedure Rules section of the guidebook, “that your reason for returning to the car's home port was to deliver the girl into safety.”

“Exactly,” Pete agreed.

“Otherwise, you would have taken possession of the car and brought it to our depot for evaluation.”

“That's just what I would have done.”

“But so long as the car was delivered into its home port it could not have been legally moved unless the owner recognized your claim and settled it by delivering the car into your ownership.”

“That was the situation.”

“I gather, then, that there was disagreement as to the just amount of the salvage claim.”

“Oh, yes,” Pete assured him. “There was a big disagreement on that point.”

The clerk looked up in complete disinterest. “And your claim was…?”

“Transfer of ownership of the car in the state of disrepair that I found it.”

“Quite harsh,” the clerk murmured.

“It's legal,” Pete replied.

“Were salvage costs discussed before you moved the car?”

“They weren't even mentioned.”

“Did the occupant have access to other sources of help?”

“I got the call over the Emergency Band. I assume others heard it.”

“Then your action appears to be legal. I'll give you a salvage order.” He began filling in a form and added, “Of course the other party does not have to honor this claim. But if it is not honored, the party must appear at this office within two days to file formal objections. Then the case goes before a referee.”

“I understand,” Pete said. He took his form and left the office.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JANE'S MOMENT OF TRUTH

Rachel Barry stared in hurt amazement. The two younger Barrys gaped, round-eyed, at Pete. But Jane was neither stunned nor frozen.

“Are you out of your mind?” she cried.

Pete had moored onto the
Snapdragon,
had been admitted into the weird interior of the ship, and had formally presented his salvage claim.

“No,” he said, briskly. “I'm not out of my mind. I'm handing you a perfectly legal claim for services rendered.”

“You mean,” Rachel Barry wailed, “that you're taking our monocar in payment for doing a small, neighborly favor?”

“The salvage classifications specify otherwise. It states in the guidebook—”

“I don't care what it states!” Jane protested. “You're trying to steal my car and I won't let you do it.”

“You have a legal right to enter a protest.”

“How could you do a thing like this?” Rachel pleaded. “You're a nice boy. Or I thought you were. But you're only a—a thief.”

“Speaking of thieves,” Pete said, “I guess I'm in good company.” He'd turned his eyes on Jane now, and his face was grim. “Did you go with your Uncle Homer to steal my claim or did he do it by himself?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about a filing early this morning on the claim I located yesterday just before I came to your rescue. Which of your sisters took the filled-in form out of my pocket while they were climbing all over me?”

The big, round eyes of the younger Barrys got bigger and rounder. “Mom,” Ellen screamed. “He's calling us
thieves
.”

Colleen chimed in, “We're not thieves, Mommy. We didn't steal his old paper.”

Jane's face had turned icy with contempt. She spoke with sharply articulated disdain. “Oh, of course. Colleen stole it. She's very sharp for her age. A mere child, but she understands every detail of a claim form and senses values instinctively. After you left she got into our disabled monocar and—”

“Cut it out!” Pete snapped. “I lost the form and this was the only place it could have happened. As I was leaving, your Uncle Homer arrived. This morning he filed a claim on my ore strike. Let's hear you talk your way out of that one.”

“It's preposterous!” Rachel Barry shrieked. “You're just persecuting a helpless widow and her—”

“Mother! Stop that! Stop begging and whining. It's a lie. All of it's a great big lie!”

Pete's smile was without humor. “Now we're getting some place. I made a definite accusation and you call me a liar. I dare you to go to Parma with me and call the clerk a liar when he shows you the affidavit with Homer Deed's name on it.”

“Go with him, Jane. Call his bluff. That's all it is.”

“Be quiet, Mother. That would only prove Uncle Homer filed a claim this morning. It wouldn't prove it was your claim.”

Pete said. “How about the original figures on the form in my handwriting? Would you dare compare it with figures Homer Deeds put down?”

“Homer was here yesterday after you left,” Rachel said. “But he—”

“Mother! We're not arguing that point. Will you let me handle this?”

Rachel turned stricken eyes on her daughter and then on Pete. They were filled with sorrow. “Such a
nice
boy. It just goes to prove how a lonely widow can be fooled.”

“Mother!
Will
you stop it? As for your claim, Pete Mason—if you discovered it, I assume you can find it again?”

“Of course I can find it again.”

“All right, I dare you to take me there.”

“To the claim? What good will that do?”

“I'm betting you can't. If you did find a strike and if Uncle Homer stole it from you and claimed it, he's probably there right now, wouldn't you say?”

“He probably is.”

“But you insist on accusing a man without giving him a chance to defend himself.”

Pete was puzzled, as indicated by his frown. “I don't get it—what you're driving at. Homer Deeds will get plenty of opportunity to defend himself. How could it be otherwise?”

“Sure—after you get a lot of lying witnesses together. There are plenty of miners who hate us and would jump at the chance to swear they were with you when you found the ore.”

“No one was with me. And I've got no lying witnesses. The documents will speak for themselves.” Would they? In truth, Pete doubted it very much, but this was no time to show weakness.

“You're afraid to go to the claim now, though, aren't you? You're afraid to face Uncle Homer with the direct accusation.”

Pete's mouth had narrowed to a grim, straight line. “Come on. It will take about two hours to get there. Can you stand being crowded into my car with me that long?”

Colleen and Ellen were wailing in chorus. “He called us thieves! He called us thieves! Uncle Homer will shoot him for that!”

“Bloodthirsty little characters, aren't they?” Pete observed coldly.

“They don't mean it,” Rachel assured him. “They hear things and repeat them.”

“They're probably right. From what I hear about Homer Deeds, he'll probably shoot first and ask what we came for later.”

Jane was moving toward the airlock. “Go ahead,” she said frigidly. “Be as coarse and insulting as you wish.”

“Yes,” Rachel added. “Be as coarse and insulting as you wish. We're just four defenseless—”

“Don't exaggerate, Mother,” Jane said in admirably controlled fury. “We're not defenseless at all. We're well able to protect our rights.”

“Don't let him take our monocar,” Colleen wept.

“He can't take it, darling. It's broken.” She opened the lock and stood ready. “Any time,
Mister
Mason.” They climbed silently into the car, got themselves arranged as comfortably as possible and thereby became the most closely associated enemies in the Belt. As Pete lifted away, he glanced back and saw two indignant faces glued to the ports. Colleen was sticking her tongue out at him. Ellen was merely making a face.

“I'm—I'm sorry to have made your mother feel bad,” Pete said. Instantly, he saw the words as a sign of weakness and wished he'd kept his mouth shut.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

“Well, I'm not. I've got a perfect right to fight back when my claim's been stolen.”

“You have yet to prove that it was stolen.”

“All in due time,” Pete murmured.

After that they rode in silence, and it was the strangest journey of Pete's life. The strangest and the clumsiest. He wasn't used to girls in the first place. A friendly one would have embarrassed him, crammed in this way. And Jane's hostility made it even worse. Filling the time with private meditation, Pete told himself that he wasn't mad at the Barrys. In fact he liked them. But when they stooped to taking rich ore right out of his mouth…

He pondered the badly mixed metaphor and wished Jane would say something. But he was darned if he'd exhibit weakness by opening the conversation himself.

As a result, there was no conversation until some time later when Jane observed, “It seems to me you're floundering all over the Belt. Do you really know where you're going?”

“I know exactly where I'm going. What do you want me to do—bang into every asteroid on the route?”

“I only want to get where we're going as soon as possible. I'm not enjoying this trip in the least.”

“Are you implying that I am?”

“I merely made a statement,” Jane said frostily.

“All right, you've got your wish. Look out to your right—at five o'clock. You'll see a cone-shaped asteroid. That's my claim. And the three men on it are claim-jumpers.”

Involuntarily, Jane, after looking where Pete directed, tensed, laid a hand on Pete's arm, and drew it away quickly. If he'd had time to notice, this might have told Pete a great deal. But he was busy lowering the ship in and was giving the task all his attention.

Blasting operations had already begun, making it obvious that the three men were wasting no time. This, Pete realized, made sense from their point of view. Due to the notoriously slow movement of Belt law as administered by the Federation, an injunction prohibiting the removal of ore could not be served for at least a week. In that length of time, with a rich strike, three experienced miners could conceivably take out a fortune and leave the Belt with their pockets lined.

“It
is
Uncle Homer,” Jane said. For the first time a small bit of uncertainty had come into her voice.

“Did you doubt it?”

Jane didn't answer and Pete realized that she'd been hoping for a mistake in identity.

The three men had stopped work and were standing motionless, watching the monocar. As its grapples tightened against the surface of the asteroid, one of them bent over. When he again came erect, he held a rifle in the crook of his arm.

“Peaceful miners,” Pete commented acidly.

“They're just taking precautions. They don't know who we are.”

“If Uncle Homer can't see you from here, he'd better have his eyes checked.”

As he shut off the jets, Pete studied the two strangers. They wore the more elaborate helmet gear used by miners rather than the lighter oxygen equipment with the smaller headpiece. Thus their faces were pretty well hidden, and all Pete could tell for sure was that they were both big, brawny men. Uncle Homer, somewhat slighter and quicker of movement, dropped the magnetized bar he'd been working with. It rang against the surface of the asteroid and anchored itself firmly. Pete opened the bubble and started to get out of the car. Jane laid a restraining hand on his arm. He obeyed it without quite knowing why and stayed where he was.

There was a moment when everything on the asteroid alive or inanimate stood motionless. Then Uncle Homer advanced toward the car.

“What are you two doing here?”

Pete could see only his eyes. He watched them for indications of mood and attitude. They were narrowed and somewhat veiled. His abrupt tone of voice was more of a clue.

But Jane was no less abrupt. “We came here to settle something, Uncle Homer. Did you file on this claim legally?”

The eyes became a part of a deep scowl. “That's a rotten thing to say, Jane. I'm surprised at you. How else would I file on a claim?”

“That's what we're here to find out. Pete says he found this asteroid and plotted the orbit yesterday afternoon.”

“That's a bald-faced lie.”

“Wait a minute. He helped me home later and says he had the form in his pocket. He was wrestling with the girls and he didn't have it when he got to the claim office and he thinks one of them slipped it out of his pocket.”

“Why, that's the craziest thing—”

The other two men were moving forward slowly. The one with the rifle stepped carefully, his body rigid and alert.

“I agree with you, Uncle Homer. Neither of the girls would do a thing like that except out of curiosity, maybe, and then they'd show it to Pete and ask him what it was.”

“You let him make a charge like that and didn't—”

Jane wasn't letting him finish his sentences. She was commanding the situation, but this margin of advantage was dubious at best.

“Never mind that. As I said, the girls didn't take the form. But it might have dropped out of his pocket.”

“You're talking in riddles!”

The retort meant nothing so far as Pete could see and he didn't think it was meant to. Homer Deeds, his scowl deepening, was grabbing words at random.

“I'm making complete sense,” Jane retorted. “I'm saying the form might have been dropped. None of us found it or we would have returned it to Pete. But you came into the ship right after he left.”

There was another of those motionless pauses in which the people acting out this tableau could have been part of the asteroid they were anchored to. Then Jane asked the next question.

“Did you pick up the form, Uncle Homer? Did you pick it up and put it into your pocket and use it to file on Pete's claim?”

“Jane! For heaven's sake!”

“You don't have to get excited, Uncle Homer. Just answer the question. A simple yes or no will do.”

The man with the rifle had been moving forward.

He was holding the weapon at a more threatening angle now.

“What is this?” he demanded. His voice was deep and quiet. There was a calm, deadly quality about it.

“We're trying to get at the truth,” Jane said.

“Possession is the proof,” the man replied. “This claim is legally filed.”

“That's right,” Uncle Homer echoed in a weaker, more sullen voice. “I'm surprised at you, Jane. Coming out here and bringing him with you. You know how it is with us. Everybody is down on the Barrys. We've got to stick together.”

“She's got to stick,” the man with the rifle said. “What else can she do?”

Uncle Homer turned and glanced uncertainly at the man, then looked back at Jane. “Honey, how would you like to have everything you ever wanted?”

“Uncle Homer, I asked you a question. All I want you to do is tell me the truth. Did you steal this claim?”

“Listen here, Deeds. This is no time to lose your nerve. The girl's got to play it our way. If I've got it figured right, the kid's got all the papers on him. Nobody can connect him with the claim if he's not around to push his complaint. He has an accident…”

Pete saw Uncle Homer's eyes harden. He didn't have the courage to commit murder himself, but with the triggerman's recklessness to lean on, he would go along with it.

Pete sat frozen. This was incredible. He'd heard stories of men desperate enough to murder for a rich claim, but he'd never believed them, because no proof had ever been found. The Asteroid Belt was vast—most of it uncharted. Millions of miles of ever-moving, ever-restless rock clusters, where finding a body was next to impossible.