The Planet Strappers Part 26

"Nothing much for me to do," he answered. "I only happened to notice, while I was coming in to Pallas, that all the guard stations, extending way out, were quietly very alert. But is that enough? Well, if they can't cope with an attack, what good am I? We're vulnerable, here. I guess we just sit tight and wait."

She smiled faintly. "All right--let's. Sit, relax, converse. Stop being the Important Personage for a while, Frank."

"Look who's talking. Okay--what do you know that's new to tell?"

"A few things. I keep track of most everybody."

He took her slender hand, brown in his angular fist, that was pale from his s.p.a.ce gloves. "Gimp, first," he said.

"Still on Mercury, with Two-and-Two. Two-and-Two was a bricklayer, a good beginning for a construction man. That seems to be paying off, as colonists move in. Gimp is setting up solar power stations."

"Encouraging information, for once. Here's a hard one--Jig Hollis. The real intelligent man who stayed home. I've envied him for years."

"Hmmm--yes, Frank. Intelligent, maybe--but he never quite believed it, himself. His wife stayed with him, even after he turned real sour and reckless. One night he hit a big oak tree with his car. Now, he is just as dead as if he had crashed into the sun at fifty miles per second. He couldn't take knowing that he was scared to do what he wanted."

"h.e.l.l!" Nelsen said flatly.

"Now who else should I gossip about?" Eileen questioned. "Oh, yes--Harv Diamond, hero of our lost youth, who got s.p.a.ce fatigue. Well, he recovered and returned to active duty in the U.S.S.F. Which perhaps leaves me with just my own love life to confess." She smiled lightly.

"Once there was a kid named Frankie Nelsen, who turned out to be a very conscientious jerk. Since then, there have been scads of rugged, romantic characters on all sides... You're going to ask about Miguel Ramos."

She paused, looked unhappy and tired. "The celebrity," she said. "Mashed up. But he'll recover--this time. I've seen him--sent him flowers, sat beside him. But what do you do with a clown like that? Lock him in the closet or look at him through a telescope? Goodbye--h.e.l.lo--goodbye. A kid with gaudy banners flying, if he lives to be forty--which he never will. They'll be giving him artificial hands and feet, and he'll be trying for Pluto. A friend. I guess I'm proud. That's all. Anything else you want to know?"

"Yeah. There was a cute little girl at Serene."

"Jennie Harper. She married one of those singing Moon prospectors.

Somebody murdered them both--way out on Far Side."

Frank Nelsen's mouth twisted. "That's enough, pal," he said. "I better go do my sitting tight someplace else. Keep your Archer handy. Thanks, and see you..."

Within forty minutes David Lester was showing him some pictures that a hopper had brought in from a vault in a surface-asteroid.

On the screen, great, mottled shapes moved through a lush forest.

Thousands of tiny, flitting bat-like creatures--miniature pterodactyls of the terrestrial Age of Reptiles--hovered over a swamp, where millions of insects hung like motes in the light of the low sun. A much larger pterodactyl, far above, glided gracefully over a cliff, and out to sea, its long, beaked head turning watchfully.

"Hey!" Nelsen said mildly, as his jaded mind responded.

Lester nodded. "_They_ were on Earth, too--as the Martians must have been--exploring and taking pictures, during the Cretaceous Period. Oh, but there's a perhaps even better sequence! Like the Martians, they had a world-wrecking missile, which they were building in s.p.a.ce. Spherical.

About six miles in diameter, I calculate. Shall I show you?"

"No... I think I'll toddle over to the offices, Les. Keep wearing those Archers, people. Glad the kid likes to play in his..."

Nelsen had donned his own Seven, with the helmet fastened across his chest by a strap. At the KRNH office, there was a letter, which luckily hadn't been sent out to Post Eight. The tone was more serious than that of any that Nance Codiss had sent before.

"Dear Frank: I'm actually coming your way. I'll be stopping to work at the Survey Station Hospital on Mars for two months en route..."

He read that far when he heard the sirens and saw the flashes of defending batteries that were trying to ward off missiles from Pallastown. He latched his helmet in place. He was headed for the underground galleries when the first impacts came. He saw four domes vanish in flashes of fire. Then he didn't run anymore. He had his small rocket launcher, from the office. If they ever came close enough... But of course they'd stay thousands of miles off. He got to the nearest fallen dome as fast as he could. Everybody had been in armor, but there were over a hundred dead. Emergency and rescue crews were operating efficiently.

He glanced around for indications. No explosive, chemical or nuclear, had yet been used. But there was the old Jolly Lad trick: Accelerate a chunk of asteroid-material to a speed of several miles per second by grasping it with your gloved hands, while the shoulder-ionic of your armor was at full power. Start at a great distance, aim your missile with your body, let it go... Impact would be sheer, blasting incandescence. A few hundred chunks of raw metal could finish Pallastown... Were these just crazy, wild slobs whooping it up, or real crud provided with a purpose and reward? Either way, here was the eternal danger to any Belt settlement.

Nelsen could have tried to reach an escape-exit into open s.p.a.ce, but he helped with the injured while he waited for more impacts to come. There was another series of deflecting flashes from the defense batteries. Two more domes vanished... Then--somehow--nothing more. Evidently some of the attackers had been only half hearted, _this time_. Reprieve...

Almost four hundred people were dead. It could have been the whole Town.

Then spreading disaster. All Nelsen's friends were okay. The Posts called in--okay, too. Nelsen waited three days. He wanted to help defend, if the attack was renewed. But now the U.N.S.F. was concentrating in the vicinity. For a while, things would be quiet, Out Here. Just the same, he felt kind of fed up. He felt as if the end of everything he knew had crept inevitably a little closer.

He beamed Mars--the Survey Station. He contacted Nance. He had known that she should have arrived already. He was relieved. He knew what the region between here and there could be like when there was trouble.

"It's me--Frank Nelsen--Nance," he said into his helmet-phone, as he stood beyond the outskirts of the Town, on the barren, glittering surface of Pallas. "I'm still wearing the sweater. Stay where you are.

I've never been on Mars, either. But I'll be there, soon..."

His old uncertainties about talking to her evaporated now that he was doing it.

"For Pete's sake--Frank!" he heard her laugh happily, still sounding like the neighbor kid. "Gosh, it's good to hear you!"

He left for Post One, soon after that. Nowadays, it was almost a miniature of the ever more magnificent--if insecure--Pallastown. He kept thinking angrily of Art Kuzak, getting a little overstuffed, it seemed.

The hunkie kid, the ex-football player who had become a big commercial and industrial baron of the Belt. Easy living. Cuties around. And poor twin Joe--just another stooge...

Nelsen went into the office, his fists clenched overdramatically. "I'm taking a leave, Art--maybe a long one," he said.

Art Kuzak stared at him. "You d.a.m.ned, independent b.u.ms--you, too, Nelsen!" he began to growl. But when he saw Nelsen's jaw harden, he got the point, and grinned, instead. "Okay, Frank. n.o.body's indispensible. I might do the same when you come back--who knows...?"

Frank Nelsen joined a KRNH bubb convoy--Earthbound, but also pa.s.sing fairly close to Mars--within a few hours.

VII

Frank Nelsen meant the journey to be vagabond escape, an interlude of to h.e.l.l with it relief from the grind, and from the increasingly uncertain mainstream of the things he knew best.

He rode with a long train of bubbs and great sheaves of smelted metal rods--tungsten, osmium, uranium 238. The sheaves had their own propelling ionic motors. He lazed like a tramp. He talked with asteroid-hoppers who meant to spend some time on Earth. Several had become almost rich. Most had strong, quiet faces that showed both distance- and home-hunger. A few had broken, and the angry sensitivity was visible.

Nelsen treated himself well. He was relieved of the duty of eternal vigilance by men whose job it was. So, for a while, his purpose was almost successful.

But the memory--or ghost--of Mitch Storey was never quite out of his mind. And, as a tiny, at first telescopic crescent with a rusty light enlarged with lessened distance ahead, the ugly enigma of present-day Mars dug deeper into his brain.

Every twenty-four hours and thirty-eight minutes--the length of the Martian day--whenever the blue-green wedge of Syrtis Major appeared in the crescent, he beamed the Survey Station, which was still maintained for the increase of knowledge, and as a safeguard for incautious adventurers who will tackle any dangerous mystery or obstacle. His object was to talk to Nance Codiss.

"I thought perhaps you and your group had gotten restless and had started out for the Belt already," he laughed during their first conversation.

"Oh, no--a lab technician like me is far too busy here, for one thing,"

she a.s.sured him, her happy tone bridging the distance. "We came this far with a well-armed freight caravan, in good pa.s.senger quarters. If we went on, I suppose it would be the same... Anyway, for years you didn't worry much about me. Why now, Frank?"

"A mystery," he teased in return. "Or perhaps because I considered Earth safe--instinctively."

But he was right in the first place. It _was_ a mystery--something to do with the startling news that she was on the way, that closer friendship was pending. The impulse to go meet her had been his first, almost thoughtless impulse.

He was still glad that she wasn't out between Mars and the Belt, where disaster had once hit him hard. But now he wondered if the Survey Station was any better for anybody, even though it was reputed to be quite secure.