Edward W. Ludwig

“ Maggie gasped. "Why, Simple Simon, what's the matter?"
The gray creature rasped, "Ben—he not one of us. He thinks—different. In thoughts—thinks escape. Earth."
Maggie paled. "He is one of us, Simon." She stepped forward and seized the Venusian's arm. "You go to your room. Stand guard. You guard Ben just like you guard me. Understand?"
Simple Simon grunted, "I guard. If Ben go—I stop him. I stop him good." He raised his huge hands suggestively.
"No, Simon! Remember what Jacob told you. We hurt no one. Ben is our friend. You help him!" ”

“ For all the brilliancy of their dreams, those men would be the lonely ones, the men of no return. For all the glory of their brief adventure, they would give not only their cloaks, but ultimately their lives.
Ben lay trembling in the darkness.
His brain cried, You couldn't rig up a radar system or a deceleration compensator, but you could chart those asteroids. You can't bring a man named Cobb back to life, but you could help a thousand men and women to stay alive five or ten or twenty years from now.
Ben knew at last what decision Jacob would have made. ”

“ Ben thought, I know a lot about you, Jacob. I know you're based on an asteroid. I know how many men you have, how many ships. I know where this dome is. I know you have men planted in the I. B. I. Would you let me go, knowing these things? How great is your immunity from the law? Do you love freedom so much that you'd kill to help preserve it?
Fear crawled through his mind on icy legs.
"Maggie," he said, "what would Jacob do if he were me?" ”

“ He fought instinctively, gauntleted fists battering.
Simple Simon fell.
Ben brushed away the dust from his face-plate, turned up his helmet's oxygen valve. Then he knelt by the fallen creature.
A new fear came to Ben Curtis—a fear almost as great as that of being caught in Simon's crushing grip. It was the fear that he had killed again.
But even in the near-darkness, he could distinguish the labored rise and fall of the massive chest.
Thank God, he thought.
From the direction of Jacob's ship, a flash of light caught his eye. The black shapes of helmeted men were becoming larger, nearer. ”

“ Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts, mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead, would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
Ben sighed. He had a debt to pay. A good officer would pay that debt. He'd surrender and take his punishment. He'd rip the crimson braid from his uniform. ”

“ They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO2-breathing Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape. They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes unblinking. ”

“ Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "Ich danke, senor. You know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner, monsieur?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"Ai-yee, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music." ”

“ Here, in a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world? Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me, felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him, he thought. You've got to find the man with the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and about forty and he hated spacemen. ”

“ Maggie's trembling hands reached for a cigarette. "I—I guess I didn't think, Ben. Venusians can't really read your mind, but they see your feelings, your emotions. It's a logical evolutionary development, I suppose. Auditory and visual communication are difficult here, so evolution turned to empathy. And that's why Jacob keeps a few Venusians in our group. They can detect any feeling of disloyalty before it becomes serious."
Ben remembered Simple Simon's icy gaze and the way his rough hand had gripped his heat pistol. "They could be dangerous." ”

“ And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a red-bearded giant.
So, Ben reflected, you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously. You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from Earth. ”

“ As he turned over on his side, his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly trimmed red beard!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night. ”

“ Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white, crimson-braided uniform of the Odyssey's junior astrogation officer. He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe. ”

“ You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate. He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you see's spacemen." ”

“ He opened his eyes and saw complete darkness. He thought at first that his eyesight had failed.
"Ben! Wake up!" Maggie's voice came to him, crisp, commanding. "The rocket's coming. I've decoded the message. We only have a few minutes."
The girl snapped on a small bulkhead light. She left him alone to dress.
He slid out of bed, a drowsiness still in him. He reached for his clothing. Abruptly, the full implication of what she had said struck him.
Jacob's rocket was coming. This was the time for decision, yet within his taut body there was only a jungle of conflicting impulses. ”

“ Jacob and his men had an existence to justify, a debt to pay. They justified that existence and paid that debt by helping humanity in its starward advance.
Maggie had said, We carry cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's getting scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. If we want to risk our lives getting it, that's our business.... The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago. We lost a few men in the construction, but with almost every advance in space, someone dies.
The wind pressed Ben back. ”

“ He wouldn't have struck Cobb. Jacob is—"
"A man? And I'm still a boy? Is that what you mean?"
"Not exactly. I think you'll be a man after you make your decision."
He frowned, not liking her answer.
"You think the dream of going into space is a boy's dream, that it can't belong to a man, too?"
"Oh, no. Jacob still has the dream. Most of our men do. And in a man, it's even more wonderful than in a boy." Then her face became more serious. "Ben, you've got to decide soon. And it's got to be a complete decision. You can have no doubt in your mind."
He nodded. "On account of Simon, you mean." ”

“ Ben nodded and turned to Maggie. "You're still coming with us?"
She shook her head, a mist shining in her sad eyes. "Not on this trip. Not without Jacob. I'll get one of our desert taxis back to Hoover City. Then I'll be going to Earth for a while. I've got some thinking to do and thinking is done best on Earth. Out here is the place for feeling." Her eyes lost a little of their pain. "But I'll be back. Jacob wouldn't stay on Earth. ”

“ He'd have fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up." ”

“ Maggie nodded eagerly. She whirled back to Ben. "Hurry! Get your helmet and suit on!"
She spun back to the big-eared little man. "Cargo unloaded? All set for the flight home?"
Home, Ben thought. She calls a place she's never seen home.
"Cargo's unloaded."
"No trouble with the I. B. I.? No investigation?"
"Not yet. We're good for a few more hauls, I guess."
Ben slipped on his windsuit. He glanced at the control panel for the airlock. Yes, he could manipulate it easily. He contemplated the heat pistol at Simple Simon's hip. A tempting idea—but, no, he wanted no more of violence. ”

“ And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the Odyssey—the first ship, it was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth. What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like people to call you a sucker." ”

“ Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. ”

“ He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how we operate? ”