It was day and it was night and it was summer and it was autumn and it was winter and it was spring and it was summer again, but you could hide out there for years without being caught.
All you did was keep shuffling the books, picking at random. That was the best you could do, the only fair way. Sometimes you got mad and took a lot from one place; sometimes you just kept going, plodding along and leaving it up to the pin.
You sighed, you stabbed, you shuddered, and you sobbed. But you never stopped. Because the pin never stopped; the scythe was always swinging.
Thus it was, and thus it would be forever. Until the day came, inevitably, when somehow, somewhere, someone would find out. . . .
L
ET'S NOT PULL ANY PUNCHES
.
The first thing that I wanted, after I landed at Skyport, was a female.
Yes, that's right. I didn't say "woman." I said "female." There aren't any women at Skyport, except for one or two of the officials, and there's no sense in wishful thinking.
But I'm not making any excuses for the way I felt. If you're one of the narrow-minded, earthbound kind, nothing I'd say would help to explain. But if you've ever been outside, you can understand. Particularly if you've been way outside.
That's where I'd been — way, way outside — for six long months. Simple little phrase, isn't it. "Six long months." But it doesn't mean to you what it means to me; it couldn't, unless you've spent that length of time in prison or any asylum on Earth, or in a floating prison or asylum outside.
Maybe you swallow all that stuff about the glamour of the Service; maybe you think of a stretch of patrol or exploratory duty in terms of a luxury cruise in a 60-passenger Moonliner. Well, you're wrong. And if you'd just gone through what I went through, you'd want female company and want it bad.
So here I was at Skyport, back again after my six long months. Six long months of imprisonment in an artificial cell, eating artificial food, breathing artificial air, living under artificial gravity. Six long months of monotony, of loneliness, of regular routine and enforced discipline. Six long months with nothing to see but the six long faces of your companions. You get so you know every possible thought in their heads, anticipate every possible word they can utter. Anticipate? You get so you
dread
the next thought, the next word.
Of course, there's some relief when you land — if you can call risking your neck on some science-forsaken asteroid a relief. If you enjoy wearing a protectelope against blazing heat or bitter cold or deadly gas, you can actually get out and stretch your legs, sometimes. All too often you have to stretch them pretty fast, when some new, unclassified denizen decides you'd make a good entree for dinner.
But I've got nothing to sell. All I say is that I had had six long months. Now I was back. I'd landed, taken the Decontamination routine, got my shots, my tests, my orders for the next trip out, and — almost as an afterthought — my five-day leave.
Five-day leave on Skyport! What a break that was!
I've already mentioned the absence of women. Now I can throw in a remark or two about the presence of Service officials, Service technicians, Service observers and Service police. Add a smattering of gouging, chiseling merchants and a good number of criminal riffraff, squeeze them all together into three square miles of tin-topped magnificence, and you have Skyport.
Think I'm griping? Well, let me tell you, right now, that it looked mighty good to me. Mighty good.
I stepped out of Barrack #5 and headed past the gates, down toward the center of town. Dark-hour was due, and the incs began to blaze in the streets. It was a sight for space-sore eyes, and no mistake. Just to see lights, any kind of lights, was momentarily enough. Just to breathe air, fresh air, all the air I wanted—wonderful! Just to feel marsth under my feet, to feel marsth and imagine it was earth — paradise!
New uniform on my back, a full exchange-clip in my pocket, and five full days of freedom; that was the setup. Five Mars-days, not Earth-days, but why quibble? This was no time for quibbling — I had a lot of things on my agenda.
I was going to hole up in one of the three Stopovers, just like a private citizen, and sleep in a real bed. A real bed, with soft silk sheets brought all the way from Earth. . . .
I was going to hit the best tavs and drink the best Earth beer; beer in cans, beer fresh from the pressurized reefer units, beer from a place called Milwoky, umpteen million miles away. . . .
I was going to look up Harley and some of the others, if they were around, and yarn about the good old days, and gripe about the Service. . . .
But first of all, and most important, I wanted a female.
I walked down the street into town, gawking and marveling the way I suppose the old "cowboys" did, five hundred years ago, when they entered some frontier post after a stretch on the "range."
Come to think of it, this
was
frontier. This was the jumping-off place; full of soldiers, Service people, crooks and gamblers and chiselers and brinkers and drifters. It was noise and bustle and cheating and drinking and it was tough as plutonium and crude as gerk — and I loved the sight and the sound of it at Dark-hour.
And more important still, I loved the thought of the contrast to come — the soft serenity, the palpable presence of an actual female. A man can relax, a man can lose his tensions, a man can find himself again, if there's a female around who can talk, who can listen, who can give him back those old illusions of grace and beauty. I wasn't seeking flesh, I was seeking spirit.
You get those ideas, outside. And when you come back, and you're in Skyport, you go to Ottar. You go to fat Ottar at his bar, the House of All Planets. You get yourself a room in his hotel upstairs and you go down to the bar and ask Ottar if he has any guests. Females, transients waiting to take the liners out again; females you can eat with, drink with, talk with.
You go to Ottar with hunger in your eyes, and you find him sitting at the downstairs desk next to the deserted bar and you say, "Long time."
And fat Ottar grins and holds out his hand. It isn't a nice hand — particularly it you believe that rumor about his having Marty blood — but you grasp it like a drowning man grasps a rope. And what fat Ottar could give me was much better than a rope.
I said, "I've got the shakes. I was wondering—"
He cut me off with a nod. "Too bad you weren't here about three months ago. A woman came here — "
"
A real woman?
"
"I wouldn't brink you. Young, too. With that yellow hair, what you call it?"
"Blonde."
"Yes. Like yours. Only longer. And she looked so." His fat hands made fat gestures.
"What happened?"
"Run off with a Chief."
I said something under my breath. Just my luck. Ottar shuffled to the reefer, got out a can of beer, pulled a posturchair up to the bar. He opened the can for me.
The beer was cold. Cold and
real
. I could actually taste it going down. That sense of reality was what I craved, now, more than anything else. "Where's everybody?" I asked. "How's business?"
Ottar shrugged. "They're all like you," he said. "When the liners bring females, they come in to see them, to talk. Otherwise, no."
Then he leaned forward. "But there is a female here. For you to see. You, only."
"What do you mean?"
"Just arrived, off Harley's unit."
I starched my ears. "Harley? You mean the old so-and-so is in town?"
"Yes and no."
"Don't brink me, Ottar. Where is he?"
"Deathside."
"No!" I stood up. "Of all the rotten, lousy news — "
"He was your friend. I am sorry." Ottar shuffled away and came back with more beer. He opened the cans with his nails. "Poor, poor Harley." He lifted the cans, extending one to me, and we drank a toast. It wasn't much of a gesture, it was a grotesque way of showing sorrow and saying goodbye, but it was genuine. The beer, as I drank it, tasted sour. Poor old Harley gone deathside! Not good.
"You know what happened?" I asked.
Ottar nodded. "Part of it."
"Then tell me — what are you waiting for?"
"I can trust you?"
"I'm not in uniform now, Ottar. This is between friends, about a friend."
"All right. I'll level. Harley and I, we were partners. I put up the money for his unit. Prospecting, off-bounds. No permits."
"I thought he was freighting, all along."
"That was the front. But he wanted to wildcat. For metals on unstaked asteroids. I got him clearance through the Chiefs."
"Don't tell me how you did it," I cut in. "It's all right. There must be dozens in the same game."
"Whatever he brought back, we split. I sold it for him, each of us took our share. And he was paying off on the unit. You know the job? Brand-new, Foss model, auto-control." Ottar sighed. "You should see what it looks like now."
"Where is it?"
"Edge of the Private Strip. Right where it crash-landed two days ago. I got the signal on my tape, of course, when the unit hit grav. And I knew what that meant — something had gone very much wrong. I was out to the Strip in five
likhs
. Got there just as it came down. Lucky, there was no explosion. Sometime or other he'd set auto-control, and a Foss unit is tough. But the nose caved in, and everything buckled. The Emergency was on the way, and I had to do some fixing in order to get on board first. But as part-owner, I made out all right."
"What did you find?"
Ottar gulped beer. "Harley must have hit something, I dope-out. Maybe he had a heart attack, or a stroke. He must have just had time to set auto-control, and then he dropped. Dropped, and hit something at grav. It was — pretty bad. Worst I've ever seen."
"How can you be so sure?"
"What other answer is there?" Ottar didn't look at me. "There was blood all over the cabin. And he was ripped open, ripped apart, wedged there in the corner with his head blown wide, nothing above the neck — "
"Damned fool would go out in a solo unit," I grumbled, which meant I could see poor old Harley lying there mangled and I felt like crying.
"Here." Ottar pushed beer my way. "You wanted me to tell you about the female."
"She was on the unit?"
"Sitting there, strapped, and staring at him. She must have strapped herself when they hit grav. She was all spattered with — "
"Did she kill him?" I snapped it out.
"Impossible. No weapons. And nobody could have done a job like that on a man. He was torn apart, I tell you, with his head almost gone. Maybe he picked up something on the trip, something Emergency has never heard about — they're investigating, of course. Something to burst a man's head and insides wide open. Oh, forget it!"
"What did the female say about it?"
Ottar shrugged. "Nothing. She doesn't talk."
"You mean she doesn't understand? Or is it shock?"
"No shock. She just doesn't talk. Can't. No sound at all."
"Where'd Harley pick her up?"
"How would I know? The Service is decoding the tape-records, but they're faked. Harley always faked them so he could sneak off to unstaked asteroids. He told me where he'd been when he came in. But now, of course, I'll never find out.
"It must have been way off the course, wherever he went. No specimens or metal in the unit — which is lucky for me, of course, with the Service investigating."
"What about the female?"
"Don't ask too many questions. I got her off the unit without anyone seeing her."
"But that's impossible — "
"They looked the other way." Ottar grinned. "Understand?"
I understood. And it wasn't any of my business. If some of the officials took graft, that was their department. I was sick of the Service, sick of hearing about Harley's death. I had five days' leave, and time was wasting.
I stood up. "This female — what's she like?"
"I'll show you." Ottar rose, led the way. We went to the stairs and a little man came out of the back and took Ottar's place at the desk, in case any customers came in while he was away.
Then we climbed the stairs.
I don't know how many rooms Ottar has in his establishment — more than anyone would suspect, from the looks of the place. All I know is that they're on both sides of a long hall, and each one has a glass panel set in the top of the door. There's a blind which drops from inside, for privacy. But unless the need for privacy exists, the blinds stay up and you can look into the rooms as you pass.
"I knew you were scheduled back," Ottar was saying. "That's why I took her off the unit — also, because I figured she might talk and then the Service would find out what Harley and I had been doing. But mostly I was hoping you could see her and find out something about what had happened."
I nodded. We went down the corridor, rounded a corner, reached the room at the farther end of the hallway.
"Now, I do not know," Ottar said. "She cannot talk or will not talk to me. She will not smile. She will not eat. She merely sits and looks at me as if she didn't like what she saw. And it hurts me, because she is so lovely."
This was strange talk, coming from old Ottar. He wasn't usually susceptible to females, any females. Nor, for that matter, was Harley. There was something very odd here, and Otter was right — I
did
want to find out what had happened to Harley.
"But what do you expect me to do?" I asked.
Ottar shook his head. "I do not know. All I ask is that you try."
He led me to a door, halted before the glass panel. I looked inside. And Ottar was right. Wherever she was from, whoever and whatever she was — she was lovely.
The female sat on the couch in the small room, sat to one side almost, directly below my line of vision, so that I stared down at her from above. She was wearing some kind of sheer smock that Ottar must have provided, but I paid no attention to that. I looked at
her
—at the smooth sweep of her limbs, at the white slope of her shoulders, at the classic contours of a face I'd seen many times before in dreams.