The Planet Strappers Part 21

"Toss us your pistols," Ramos commanded, as they drifted close, checking speed.

Tiflin flashed a smirk that showed that his front teeth were missing.

"Honest, Mex--do you expect us to do that? Be cavalier--I haven't even got a pistol, right now. Neither has Igor, here. Come look-see... Hi, Frankie!"

"Just stay there," Nelsen gruffed.

Tiflin c.o.c.ked his head inside the helmet of a brand-new Archer Six, in a burlesqued pose for inspection. He looked bad. His face had turned hard and lean. There were scars on it. The nervous, explosive-tempered kid, who couldn't have survived out here, had been burned out of him. For a second, Nelsen almost thought that the change could be for the good. But it was naive to hope that that could happen. Glen Tiflin had become pa.s.sive, yielding, mocking, with an air of secret knowledge withheld.

What did an att.i.tude like that suggest? Treachery, or, perhaps worse, a kind of poised--and poisonous--mental judo?

Nelsen looked at the other man, who wore a Tovie armor. Tall, starvation-lean. Horse-faced, with a lugubrious, b.u.mpkinish smile that almost had a whimsical appeal.

"Honest--I just picked up Igor--which ain't his real name--in the course of my travels," Tiflin offered lightly. "He used to be a comic back in Eurasia. He got bored with life on Ceres, and sort of tumbled away."

With his body stiff as a stick, Igor toppled forward, his mouth gaping in dismay. He turned completely over, his great boots kicking awkwardly.

His angular elbows flapped like crow-wings. He righted himself, looked astonished, then beatifically self-approving. He burped delicately, patted his chest plate, then sniffed in sad protest at the leveled pistols.

Now Nelsen and Ramos cast off the loaded nets they had been towing, and closed in on this strange pair. Nelsen did the searching, while Ramos pointed the guns.

"Haven't even got my shiv anymore, Frankie," Tiflin remarked, casually.

"Threw it at a guy named Fessler, once. Missed by an inch. Guess it's still going--round and round the sun, for millions of years. Longest knife throw there ever was."

"Fessler!" Frank snapped. "Now we're getting places, you s...o...b..! The funny character that robbed and dumped Ramos and me, I'll bet. Probably with your help! You know him, huh?"

"_Knew_--for a while--past tense," Tiflin chuckled wickedly. "Nope--it wasn't me that stripped off his armor in s.p.a.ce. He wasn't even around, anymore, when you beauties got caught. They come and they go."

"But _you_ were around, Tiflin!"

"Maybe not. Maybe I was twenty million miles off."

"Like h.e.l.l!" Nelsen gritted his teeth, grabbed Tiflin's shoulder, and swung his gloved fist as hard as he could against the thin layer of rubber and wire over Tiflin's stomach. He struck three times.

"d.a.m.n you!" Nelsen snarled. "I promised myself I'd get you good, Tiflin!

Now tell us what else you and your friends are cooking for us, or by the Big Silence, you'll be a drifting, explosively decompressed mummy!"

Frank Nelsen didn't know till now, after exerting himself, how weak privations had made him. He felt dizzy.

Tiflin's eyes had glazed slightly, as he and Frank did a slow roll, together. He gasped. But that insulting smirk came back.

"Haven't had your Wheaties lately, have you, Frank? Go ahead--hit, knock yourself out. You, too, Mex. I've been slugged before, by big men, in shape...! Could be I'm not cooking anything. Except I notice that you two have found yourselves some very interesting local objects of ancient history, worth a little money. Also, some good, raw metal... Well, I suppose you want to get the load and yourselves to the famous twins, Art and Joe. That's easy--with luck. Though the region is a trifle disturbed, right now. But I can tell you where they are. You won't have to fiddle around, hunting."

"Here, hold these guns, Frank. Lemme have a couple of pokes at the slob," Ramos snapped.

"Aw-right, aw-right--who's asking you guys to believe me?" Tiflin cut in. "I'll beam the twins for you--since I'd guess your transmitter won't reach. You can listen in, and talk back through my set. Okay?"

"Let's see what happens--just for kicks," Ramos said softly. "If you're calling some friends to come and get us, or anything, Tif--well, you've had it!"

They watched Tiflin spin and focus the antenna. "Kuzak... Kuzak...

Kuzak... Kuzak..." he said into his phone. "Missing boys alive and coming to you. Mex and old Guess Which... Kicking and independent, but very hungry, I think... Put on the coffee pot, you storekeepers...

Kuzak... Kuzak... Kuzak... Talk up, Frank and Miguel. Your voices will relay through my phone..."

"Hi, Art and Joe--it's us," Ramos almost apologized.

"Yeah--we don't quite know yet what Tiflin is pulling. But here we are--if it's you we're talking to..."

There was the usual long wait as impulses bridged the light-minutes.

Then Art Kuzak's voice snarled guardedly. "I hear you, Ram and Nel. Come in, if you can...! Tif, you garbage! Someday...! This is all. This is all..." The message broke off.

Tiflin smirked. "Third quadrant of the Belt," he said, giving a position in s.p.a.ce almost like lat.i.tude and longitude on Earth. "About twenty minutes of the thirty-first degree. Three degrees above median orbital plane. Approximately two hundred hours from here. Can Igor and I leave you, now, or do you want us to escort you in?"

"_We'll_ escort _you_," Ramos said.

So it was, until, near the end of a long ride, a cl.u.s.ter of bubbs was in view in the near distance, and Ramos and Nelsen could contact Art Kuzak themselves.

"We've got Tiflin and his Tovie pal with us, Art," Frank Nelsen said.

"They showed us the way, more or less because we made them. But Tif did give us the right position at the start. A favor, maybe. I don't know.

And now he's saying, 'Be cavalier--it might be awkward for me to meet Art and Joe just at present.' Do you want to fix this character's wagon bad enough? Your customers could get mean--if he ever did them dirt."

"Just one thing I've got against Tiflin!" Art snarled back. "Every time I hear his voice, it means trouble. But I've never seen the crumb face-to-face since that Moonhop. Okay, let's not spoil my stomach. Turn him loose. It can't make much difference. Or maybe I'm sentimental about the old Bunch. He was our cracked, s.p.a.ce-wild punk."

"Thanks, Art," Tiflin laughed.

In a minute he, and his comic, scarecrow pal who originated from the dark side of trouble, on Earth and out here, too, were fading against the stars.

Nelsen and Ramos, the long-lost, glided in, past some grim hoppers. A bubb and sweet air were around them once more. They shed their stinking Archer Threes. Hot showers--miraculous luxury--played over them. They rubbed disinfectant salves into their fungus-ridden hides.

Then there was a clean, white table, with plates, knives, forks. They had to treat their shrunken stomachs gently--just a little of everything--beer, steak, vegetables, fruit... Somewhere during the past, unmarked days Frank Nelsen had gotten to be twenty years old. Only twenty? Well--maybe this was his celebration.

Ramos and he told their story very briefly. Little time was wasted on congratulations for survival or talk of losses long past. The Kuzaks looked leaner and tougher, now, and there were plenty of present difficulties to worry them. Joe Kuzak hurried out to argue with the miners at the raw metal receiving bins and at the store bubbs. Art stayed to explain the present situation.

"Three big loads of supplies were shipped through to us from the Moon,"

he growled. "We did fine, trading for metal. We sent J. John Reynolds his percentage--a fair fraction of his entire loan. We sent old Paul five thousand dollars. But the fourth and fifth loads of trade stuff got pirated en route. When there's trouble on Earth, it comes out here, too.

Ceres, colonized by our socialist Tovie friends of northern Eurasia, helps stir up the b.u.ms, who think up plenty of h.e.l.l on their own. It's a force-out attempt aimed at us or at anybody who thinks our way. After two lost shipments, and a lot of new installations here at the Post, we're about broke, again. Worse, we've got the asteroid-hoppers expecting us to come through with pay for the new metal in their nets, and with stuff they need. Back home, some people used to raise h.e.l.l about a trifle like a delayed letter. How about a s.p.a.ceman's reaction, when what is delayed may be something to keep him alive? They could get really annoyed, and kick this place apart."

Art Kuzak blew air up past his pug nose, and continued. "Finance--here we go again, Frank!" he chuckled. "Gimp Hines is helping us. After Mars, he came here without trouble. He's in Pallastown, now, trying to raise some fast cash, and to rush supplies through from there, under s.p.a.ce Force guard. You know he's got a head for commerce as well as science.

But our post, here, perhaps isn't considered secure enough to back a loan, anymore."

Art grinned wryly at Nelsen and Ramos. His hint was plain. He had seen the museum pieces that they had brought in.

"Should we, Frank?" Ramos chuckled after a moment.

"Possibly... We've got some collateral, Art. Lots more valuable per unit ma.s.s than any raw metal, I should think."

"So you might want to work for us?" Art inquired blandly.

"Not 'for'," Nelsen chuckled. "We might say 'with'."

"Okay, Cuties," Art laughed.