The Rolling Stones (25 page)

“Cut the racket,” Castor told Pollux. “If he’s alive, he’s heard you by now.” Pollux complied and tried the door again—still locked.

They heard a muffled voice: “Who’s there?”

Castor looked around for the source of the voice, could not spot it. “Castor and Pollux Stone,” he answered, “from the
Rolling Stone,
out of Luna.”

Somebody chuckled. “You don’t fool me. And you can’t arrest me without a warrant. Anyhow I won’t let you in.”

Castor started to explode; Pollux patted his arm. “We aren’t cops. Shucks, we aren’t old enough to be cops.”

“Take your helmets off.”

“Don’t do it,” Castor cautioned. “He could recycle while we’re unsealed.”

Pollux went ahead and took his off; Castor hesitated, then followed. “Let us in,” Pollux said mildly.

“Why should I?”

“We’re customers. We want to buy things.”

“What you got to trade?”

“We’ll pay cash.”

“Cash!” said the voice. “Banks! Governments! What you got to
trade
? Any chocolate?”

“Cas,” Pollux whispered, “have we got
any
chocolate left?”

“Maybe six or seven pounds. Not more.”

“Sure we got chocolate.”

“Le’me see it.”

Castor interrupted. “What sort of nonsense is this? Pol, let’s go back and see Mr. Fries again. He’s a businessman.”

The voice moaned, “Oh, don’t do that! He’ll cheat you.”

“Then open up!”

After a few seconds of silence the voice said wheedlingly, “You look like nice boys. You wouldn’t hurt Charlie? Not old Charlie?”

“Of course not. We want to trade with you.”

The door opened at last. In the gloom a face, etched by age and darkened by raw sunlight, peered out at them. “Come in easy. Don’t try any tricks—I know you.”

Wondering if it were the sensible thing to do the boys pulled themselves in. When their eyes adjusted to the feeble circle of glow tube in the middle of the space they looked around while their host looked at them. The tank, large outside, seemed smaller by the way it was stuffed. As in Fries’ shop, every inch, every strut, every nook was crammed, but where the City Hall was neat, this was rank disorder, where Fries’ shop was rational, this was nightmare confusion. The air was rich enough but ripe with ancient and nameless odors.

Their host was a skinny monkey of a man, covered with a single dark garment, save for head, hands, and bare feet. It had once been, Pollux decided, heated underwear for spacesuit use far out starside, or in caves.

Old Charlie stared at them, then grinned, reached up and scratched his neck with his big toe. “Nice boys,” he said. “I knew you wouldn’t hurt Charlie. I was just foolin’.”

“We wouldn’t hurt anybody. We just wanted to get acquainted and do a little business.”

“We want a—” Pollux started; Castor’s elbow cut off the rest; Castor went on,

“Nice place you’ve got here.”

“Comfortable. Practical. Just right for a man with no nonsense about him. Good place for a man who likes to be quiet and think. Good place to read a book. You boys like to read?”

“Sure. Love to.”

“You want to see my books?” Without waiting for an answer he darted like a bat into the gloom, came back in a few moments with books in both hands and a half dozen held by his feet. He bumped to a stop with his elbows and offered them.

There were old-style bound books, most of them, the twins saw, ships’ manuals of ships long dead. Castor’s eyes widened when he saw the dates on some of them, and wondered what the Astrogation Institute would pay for them. Among them was a dog-eared copy of Mark Twain’s
Life on the Mississippi.

“Look ’em over, boys. Make yourselves comfortable. Bet you didn’t expect to find a literary man out here among these yokels. You boys can read, can’t you?”

“Sure we can.”

“Didn’t know. They teach such funny things nowadays. Quote a bit of Latin to ’em and they look like you’re crazy in the head. You boys hungry? You want something to eat?” He looked anxious.

They both assured him that they had fed well and recently; he looked relieved. “Old Charlie ain’t one to let a man go hungry, even if he hasn’t got enough himself.” Castor had noted a net of sealed rations; there must have been a thousand of them by conservative estimate. But the old man continued, “Seen the time, right here in this node—no, it was the Emmy Lou—when a man didn’t dare make breakfast without he barred his lock first and turned off his beacon. It was about that time that Lafe Dumont ate High-Grade Henderson. He was dead first, naturally—but it brought on a crisis in our community affairs. They formed up the vigilantes, what they call the Committee nowadays.”

“Why did he eat him?”

“Why, he was
dead.
I told you that. Just the same, I don’t think a man ought to eat his own partner, do you?”

The boys agreed that it was a breech of etiquette.

“I think he ought to limit it to members of his own family, unless the two of them have got a signed and sealed contract. Seen any ghosts yet?”

The acceleration was so sharp that it left both the twins a bit confused. “Ghosts?”

“You will. Many’s the time I’ve talked to High-Grade Henderson. Said he didn’t blame Lafe a bit, would’a’ done the same thing in his place. Ghosts all around here. All the rockmen that have died out here, they can’t get back to Earth. They’re in a permanent orbit—see? And it stands to reason that you can’t accelerate anything that doesn’t have mass.” He leaned toward them confidentially. “Sometimes you see ’em, but mostly they whisper in your earphones. And when they do,
listen—
because that’s the only way you’ll ever find any of the big strikes that got found and then got lost again. I’m telling you this because I like you, see? So listen. If it’s too faint, just close your chin valve and hold your breath; then it comes clearer.”

They agreed and thanked him. “Now tell me about yourselves, boys.” To their surprise he appeared to mean it; when they slowed down he taxed them for details, filling in only occasionally with his own disjointed anecdotes. At last Castor described the fiasco of the flat cats. “So that’s why we don’t have much food to trade with. But we do have some chocolate left and lots of other things.”

Charlie rocked back and forth from his perch in the air. “Flat cats, eh? I ain’t had my hands on a flat cat in a power of years. Nice to hold, they are. Nice to have around. Philosophical, if we just understand ’em.” He suddenly fixed Castor with his eye. “What you planning to do with all those flat cats?”

“Why, nothing, I guess.”

“That’s just what I thought. You wouldn’t mind giving a poor old man who hasn’t kith nor kin nor wife nor chick one of those harmless flat cats? An old man who would always give you a bite to eat and a charge for your suit bottle?”

Castor glanced at Pollux and agreed cautiously that any dicker they reached would certainly include a flat cat as a mark of faith in dealing. “Then what do you want? You talked about scooters. You know old Charlie hasn’t got a scooter—except the one I have to have myself to stay alive.”

Castor broached the notion about repairing old parts, fitting together a scooter. Charlie scratched an inch-long stubble. “Seems to me I did have a rocket motor—you wouldn’t mind if it lacked a valve or two? Or did I trade that to Swede Gonzalez? No, that was another one. I think—just a second while I take a look.” He was gone more nearly six hundred seconds, buried in the mass; he came out dragging a piece of junk behind. “There you are! Practically new. Nothing a couple of bright boys couldn’t fix.”

Pollux looked at Castor. “What do you think it’s worth?”

Castor’s lips moved silently: “He ought to pay us to take it away.” It took them another twenty minutes but they got it for three pounds of chocolate and one flat cat.

FLAT CATS FINANCIAL

I
T TOOK THE BETTER PART

of two weeks to make the ancient oxy-alcohol engine work; another week to build a scooter rack to receive it, using tubing from Fries’ second-hand supply. It was not a pretty thing, but, with the
Stone
’s stereo gear mounted on it, it was an efficient way to get around the node. Captain Stone shook his head over it and subjected it to endless tests before he conceded that it was safe even though ugly.

In the meantime the Committee had decreed a taxi service for the doctor lady; every miner working within fifty miles of City Hall was required to take his turn at standby watch with his scooter, with a fixed payment in high grade for any run he might have to make. The Stones saw very little of Edith Stone during this time; it seemed as if every citizen of Rock City had been saving up ailments.

But they were not forced to fall back on Hazel’s uninspired cooking. Fries had the
Stone
warped into contact with City Hall and a passenger tube sealed from the
Stone
’s lock to an unused hatch of the bigger ship; when Dr. Stone was away they ate in his restaurant. Mrs. Fries was an excellent cook and she raised a great variety in her hydroponics garden.

While they were rigging the scooter the twins had time to mull over the matter of the flat cats. It had dawned on them that here in Rock City was a potential, unexploded market for flat cats. The question was: how best to milk it for all the traffic would bear?

Pol suggested that they peddle them in the scooter; he pointed out that a man’s sales resistance was lowest, practically zero, when he actually had a flat cat in his hands. His brother shook his head. “No good, Junior.”

“Why not?”

“One, the Captain won’t let us monopolize the scooter; you know he regards it as ship’s equipment, built by the crew, namely us. Two, we would burn up our profits in scooter fuel. Three, it’s too slow; before we could move a third of them, some idiot would have fed our first sale too much, it has kittens—and there you are, with the market flooded with flat cats. The idea is to sell them as nearly as possible all at one time.”

“We could stick up a sign in the store—One-Price would let us—and sell them right out of the
Stone.
”

“Better but not good enough. Most of these rats shop only every three or four months. No, sir, we’ve got to build that better mouse trap and make the world beat a path to our door.”

“I’ve never been able to figure out why anybody would want to trap a mouse. Decompress a compartment and you kill all of them, every time.”

“Just a figure of speech, no doubt. Junior, what can we do to make Rock City flat-cat conscious?”

They found a way. The Belt, for all its lonely reaches—or because of them—was as neighborly as a village. They gossiped among themselves, by suit radio. Out in the shining blackness it was good to know that, if something went wrong, there was a man listening not five hundred miles away who would come and investigate if you broke off and did not answer.

They gossiped from node to node by their more powerful ship’s radios. A rumor of death, of a big strike, or of accident would bounce around the entire belt, relayed from rockman to rockman, at just short of the speed of light. Heartbreak node was sixty-six light-minutes away, following orbit; big news often reached it in less than two hours, including numerous manual relays.

Rock City even had its own broadcast. Twice a day One-Price picked up the news from Earthside, then rebroadcast it with his own salty comments. The twins decided to follow it with one of their own, on the same wave length—a music & chatter show, with commercials. Oh, decidedly with commercials. They had hundreds of spools in stock which they could use, then sell, along with the portable projectors they had bought on Mars.

They started in; the show never was very good, but, on the other hand, it had no competition and it was free. Immediately following Fries’ sign-off Castor would say, “Don’t go away, neighbors! Here we are again with two hours of fun and music—and a few tips on bargains. But first, our theme—the war-r-rm and friendly purr of a Martian flat cat.” Pollux would hold Fuzzy Britches up to the microphone and stroke it; the good-natured little creature would always respond with a loud buzz. “Wouldn’t that be nice to come home to? And now for some music: Harry Weinstein’s Sunbeam Six in ‘High Gravity.’ Let me remind you that this tape, like all other music on this program, may be purchased at an amazing saving in Flat Cat Alley, right off the City Hall—as well as Ajax three-way projectors in the Giant, Jr., model, for sound, sight, and stereo. The Sunbeam Six—hit it, Harry!”

Sometimes they would do interviews:

Castor: “A few words with one of our leading citizens, Rocks-in-his-head Rudolf. Mr. Rudolf, all Rock City is waiting to hear from you. Tell me, do you like it out here?”

Pollux: “Naw!”

Castor: “But you’re making lots of money, Mr. Rudolf?”

Pollux: “Naw!”

Castor: “At least you bring in enough high grade to eat well?”

“Naw!”

“No? Tell me, why did you come out here in the first place?”

Pollux: “Bub, was
you
ever married?”

Sound effect of blow with blunt instrument, groan, and the unmistakable cycling of an air lock—Castor: “Sorry, folks. My assistant has just spaced Mr. Rudolf. To the purchaser of the flat cat we had been saving for Mr. Rudolf we will give away—absolutely free!—a beautiful pin-up picture printed in gorgeous living colors on fireproof paper. I hate to tell you what these pictures ordinarily sell for on Ceres; it hurts me to say how little we are letting them go for now, until our limited stock is exhausted. To the very first customer who comes in that door wanting to purchase a flat cat we will—Lock that door! Lock that door! All right, all right—all three of you will receive pin-up pictures; we don’t want anyone fighting here. But you’ll have to wait until we finish this broadcast. Sorry, neighbors—a slight interruption but we settled it without bloodshed. But I find myself in a dilemma. I made you a promise and I did not know what would happen, but the truth is, too many customers were already here, pounding on the door of Flat Cat Alley. But to make good our promise I am enlarging it: not to the first customer, not to the second, nor to the third—but to the next
twenty
persons purchasing flat cats will go, absolutely free, one of these gorgeous pictures. Bring no money—we accept high grade or core material at the standard rates.”