Robert Heinlein - Double Star

Dak saw to it that we climbed out of the capsule together, else I would have slammed it shut and gone elsewhere at once. I pretended not to notice and stuck close as a puppy to him as we went up the belt to the main hall just under the surface, coming out between the Pan-Am desk and American Skylines. Dak headed straight across the waiting-room floor toward Diana, Ltd., and I surmised that he was going to buy tickets for the Moonshuttle — how he planned to get me aboard without passport or vaccination certificate I could not guess but I knew that he was resourceful. I decided that I would fade into the furniture while he had his wallet out; when a man counts money there are at least a few seconds when his eyes and attention are fully occupied.

But we went right on past the Diana desk and through an archway marked Private Berths. The passageway beyond was not crowded and the walls were blank; I realized with dismay that I had let slip my best chance, back there in the busy main hall. I held back. «Dak? Are we making a jump?»

«Of course.»

«Dak, you're crazy. I've got no papers, I don't even have a tourist card for the Moon.»

«You won't need them.»

«Huh? They'll stop me at “Emigration.” Then a big, beefy cop will start asking questions.»

A hand about the size of a cat closed on my upper arm. «Let's not waste time. Why should you go through “Emigration,” when officially you aren't leaving? And why should I, when officially I never arrived? Quick-march, old son.»

I am well muscled and not small, but I felt as if a traffic robot were pulling me out of a danger zone. I saw a sign reading MEN and I made a desperate attempt to break it up. «Dak, half a minute, please. Got to see a man about the plumbing.»

He grinned at me. «Oh, yes? You went just before we left the hotel.» He did not slow up or let go of me.

«Kidney trouble — »

«Lorenzo old son, I smell a case of cold feet. Tell you what I'll do. See that cop up ahead?» At the end of the corridor, in the private berths station, a defender of the peace was resting his big feet by leaning over a counter. «I find I have a sudden attack of conscience. I feel a need to confess — about how you killed a visiting Martian and two local citizens — about how you held a gun on me and forced me to help you dispose of the bodies. About — »

«You're crazy!»

«Almost out of my mind with anguish and remorse, shipmate.»

«But — you've got nothing on me.»

«So? I think my story will sound more convincing than yours. I know what it is all about and you don't. I know all about you and you know nothing about me. For example...» He mentioned a couple of details in my past that I would have sworn were buried and forgotten. All right, so I did have a couple of routines useful for stag shows that are not for the family trade — a man has to eat. But that matter about Bebe; that was hardly fair, for I certainly had not known that she was underage. As for that hotel bill, while it is true that bilking an «innkeeper» in Miami Beach carries much the same punishment as armed robbery elsewhere, it is a very provincial attitude — I would have paid if I had had the money. As for that unfortunate incident in Seattle — well, what I am trying to say is that Dak did know an amazing amount about my background but he had the wrong slant on most of it. Still...

«So,» he continued, «let's walk right up to yon gendarme and make a clean breast of it. I'll lay you seven to two as to which one of us is out on bail first.»

So we marched up to the cop and on past him. He was talking to a female clerk back of the railing and neither one of them looked up. Dak took out two tickets reading, GATE PASS — MAINTENANCE PERMIT — Berth K-127, and stuck them into the monitor. The machine scanned them, a transparency directed us to take an upper-level car, code King 127; the gate let us through and locked behind us as a recorded voice said, «Watch your step, please, and heed radiation warnings. The Terminal Company is not responsible for accidents beyond the gate.»

Dak punched an entirely different code in the little car; it wheeled around, picked a track, and we took off out under the field. It did not matter to me, I was beyond caring.

When we stepped out of the little car it went back where it came from. In front of me was a ladder disappearing into the steel ceiling above. Dak nudged me. «Up you go.» There was a scuttle hole at the top and on it a sign: RADIATION HAZARD — Optimax 13 Seconds. The figures had been chalked in. I stopped. I have no special interest in offspring but I am no fool. Dak grinned and said, «Got your lead britches on? Open it, go through at once and straight up the ladder into the ship. If you don't stop to scratch, you'll make it with at least three seconds to spare.»

I believe I made it with five seconds to spare. I was out in the sunlight for about ten feet, then I was inside a long tube in the ship. I used about every third rung.

The rocket ship was apparently small. At least the control room was quite cramped; I never got a look at the outside. The only other spaceships I had ever been in were the Moon shuttles Evangeline and her sister ship the Gabriel, that being the year in which I had incautiously accepted a lunar engagement on a co-op basis — our impresario had had a notion that a juggling, tightrope, and acrobatic routine would go well in the one-sixth gee of the Moon, which was correct as far as it went, but he had not allowed rehearsal time for us to get used to low gravity. I had to take advantage of the Distressed Travelers Act to get back and I had lost my wardrobe.

There were two men in the control room; one was lying in one of three acceleration couches fiddling with dials, the other was making obscure motions with a screw driver. The one in the couch glanced at me, said nothing. The other one turned, looked worried, then said past me, «What happened to Jock?»

Dak almost levitated out of the hatch behind me. «No time!» he snapped. «Have you compensated for his mass?»

«Yes.»

«Red, is she taped? Tower?»

The man in the couch answered lazily, «I've been recomputing every two minutes. You're clear with the tower. Minus forty — , uh, seven seconds.»

«Out of that bunk! Scram! I'm going to catch that tick!»

Red moved lazily out of the couch as Dak got in. The other man shoved me into the copilot's couch and strapped a safety belt across my chest. He turned and dropped down the escape tube. Red followed him, then stopped with his head and shoulders out. «Tickets, please!» he said cheerfully.

«Oh, cripes!» Dak loosened a safety belt, reached for a pocket, got out the two field passes we had used to sneak aboard, and shoved them at him.

«Thanks,» Red answered. «See you in church. Hot jets, and so forth.» He disappeared with leisurely swiftness; I heard the air lock close and my eardrums popped. Dak did not answer his farewell; his eyes were busy on the computer dials and he made some minor adjustment.

«Twenty-one seconds,» he said to me. «There'll be no rundown. Be sure your arms are inside and that you are relaxed. The first step is going to be a honey.»

I did as I was told, then waited for hours in that curtain-going-up tension. Finally I said, «Dak?»

«Shut up!»

«Just one thing: where are we going?»

«Mars.» I saw his thumb jab at a red button and I blacked out.

What is so funny about a man being drop sick? Those dolts with cast-iron stomachs always laugh — I'll bet they would laugh if Grandma broke both legs.

I was spacesick, of course, as soon as the rocket ship quit blasting and went into free fall. I came out of it fairly quickly as my stomach was practically empty — I'd eaten nothing since breakfast — and was simply wanly miserable the remaining eternity of that awful trip. It took us an hour and forty-three minutes to make rendezvous, which is roughly equal to a thousand years in purgatory to a ground hog like myself.