Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

“Two weeks after Jafe McCann’s death,” Henderson said, “we received a cash-return form on his policy.”

“A cash-return form?” I’d never heard of such a thing. It didn’t sound like anything Tangiers Mutual would have anything to do with. We never return cash.

“It’s something special in this case,” he explained. “You see, this isn’t an insurance policy, it’s a retirement plan, and the client can withdraw from the retirement plan at any time, and have seventy-five per cent of his paid-up premiums returned to him. It’s, uh, the law in plans such as this.”

“Oh,” I said. That explained it. A law that had snuck through the World Finance Code Commission while the insurance lobby wasn’t looking.

“But you see the point,” said Henderson. “This cash-return form arrived two weeks after the client’s death.”

“You said there weren’t any beneficiaries,” I pointed out.

“Of course. But the form was sent in by the man’s partner, one Ab Karpin. McCann left a hand-written will bequeathing all his possessions to Karpin. Since, according to Karpin, this was done before McCann’s death, the premium money cannot be considered part of the policy, but as part of McCann’s cash-on-hand. And Karpin wants it.”

“It can’t be that much, can it?” I asked. I was trying my best to point out to him that the company would spend more than it would save if it sent me all the way out to the asteroids, a prospect I could feel coming and one which I wasn’t ready to cry hosannah over.

“McCann died,” Henderson said ponderously, “at the age of fifty-six. He had set his retirement age at sixty. He took out the policy at the age of thirty-four, with monthly payments of fifty credits. Figure it out for yourself.”

I did—in my head—and came up with a figure of thirteen thousand and two hundred credits. Seventy-five per cent of that would be nine thousand and nine hundred credits. Call it ten thousand credits even.

I had to admit it. It was worth the trip.

“I see,” I said sadly.

“Now,” said Henderson, “the conditions—the circumstances—of McCann’s death are somewhat suspicious. And so is the cash-return form itself.”

“There’s a chance it’s a forgery?”

“One would think so,” he said. “But our handwriting experts have worn themselves out with that form, comparing it with every other single scrap of McCann’s writing they can find. And their conclusion is that not only is it genuinely McCann’s handwriting, but it is McCann’s handwriting at age fifty-six.”

“So McCann must have written it,” I said. “Under duress, do you think?”

“I have no idea,” said Henderson complacently. “That’s what you’re supposed to find out. Oh, there’s just one more thing.”

I did my best to make my ears perk.

“I told you that McCann’s death occurred under somewhat suspicious circumstances.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “you did.”

“McCann and Karpin,” he said, “have been partners—unincorporated, of course—for the last fifteen years. They had found small rare-metal deposits now and again, but they had never found that one big strike all the Belt prospectors waste their lives looking for. Not until the day before McCann died.”

“Ah hah,” I said. “Then they found the big strike.”

“Exactly.”

“And McCann’s death?”

“Accidental.”

“Sure,” I said. “What proof have we got?”

“None. The body is lost in space. And law is few and far between that far out.”

“So all we’ve got is this guy Karpin’s word for how McCann died, is that it?”

“That’s all we have. So far.”

“Sure. And now you want me to go on out there and find out what’s cooking, and see if I can maybe save the company ten thousand credits.”

“Exactly,” said Henderson.

The copter took me to the spaceport west of Cairo, and there I boarded the good ship Demeter for Luna City and points Out. I loaded up on g-sickness pills and they worked fine. I was sick as a dog.

By the time we got to Atronics City, my insides had grown resigned to their fate. As long as I didn’t try to eat, my stomach would leave me alone.

Atronics City was about as depressing as a Turkish bath with all the lights on. It stood on a chunk of rock a couple of miles thick, and it looked like nothing more in this world than a welder’s practice range.

From the outside, Atronics City is just a derby-shaped dome of nickel-iron, black and kind of dirty-looking. I suppose a transparent dome would have been more fun, but the builders of the company cities in the asteroids were businessmen, and they weren’t concerned with having fun. There’s nothing to look at outside the dome but chunks of rock and the blackness of space anyway, and you’ve got all this cheap iron floating around in the vicinity, and all a dome’s supposed to do is keep the air in. Besides, though the Belt isn’t as crowded as a lot of people think, there is quite a lot of debris rushing here and there, bumping into things, and a transparent dome would just get all scratched up, not to mention punctured.

From the inside, Atronics City is even jollier. There’s the top level, directly under the dome, which is mainly parking area for scooters and tuggers of various kinds, plus the office shacks of the Assayer’s Office, the Entry Authority, the Industry Troopers and so on. The next three levels have all been burned into the bowels of the planetoid.

Level two is the Atronics plant, and a noisy plant it is. Level three is the shopping and entertainment area—grocery stores and clothing stores and movie theaters and bars—and level four is housing, two rooms and kitchen for the unmarried, four rooms and kitchen plus one room for each child for the married.

All of these levels have one thing in common. Square corners, painted olive drab. The total effect of the place is suffocating. You feel like you’re stuck in the middle of a stack of packing crates.

Most of the people living in Atronics City work, of course, for International Atronics, Incorporated. The rest of them work in the service occupations—running the bars and grocery stores and so on—that keep the company employees alive and relatively happy.

Wages come high in the places like Atronics City. Why not, the raw materials come practically for free. And as for working conditions, well, take a for instance. How do you make a vacuum tube? You fiddle with the innards and surround it all with glass. And how do you get the air out? No problem, boy, there wasn’t any air in there to begin with.

At any rate, there I was at Atronics City. That was as far as Demeter would take me. Now, while the ship went on to Ludlum City and Chemisant City and the other asteroid business towns, my two suitcases and I dribbled down the elevator to my hostelry on level four.

Have you ever taken an elevator ride when the gravity is practically non-existent? Well, don’t. You see, the elevator manages to sink faster than you do. It isn’t being lowered down to level four, it’s being pulled down.

What this means is that the suitcases have to be lashed down with the straps provided, and you and the operator have to hold on tight to the hand-grips placed here and there around the wall. Otherwise, you’d clonk your head on the ceiling.

But we got to level four at last, and off I went with my suitcases and the operator’s directions. The suitcases weighed about half an ounce each out here, and I felt as though I weighed the same. Every time I raised a foot, I was sure I was about to go sailing into a wall. Local citizens eased by me, their feet occasionally touching the iron pavement as they soared along, and I gave them all dirty looks.