Sidney's Comet (18 page)

Chapter Eight

U
P CLOSE WITH THE MASTER, FOR FURTHER READING AND DISCUSSION

April 8, 2299 through April 21, 2299: Uncle Rosy’s famous “Long March,” in which he led a moto-shoe procession from New City to Philadelphia for the cause of newness, collecting old consumer goods for disposal.

Monday, August 28, 2605

To President Ogg, quitting time was as sacred a moment as starting time. Glancing irritably at his watch, he thought,
Seven minutes past five. The preliminary forensic report on Munoz should have been here twenty-two minutes ago!

He rose angrily and rolled into the outer office.
Crisis or no crisis,
he thought,
I’m not staying any longer!

Two minutes later, he rolled out of the elevator at the rooftop helipad. While crossing the pad to reach Autocopter One, Ogg heard the elevator doors open behind him. He turned to see Billie Birdbright rush out, face flushed, carrying a sheet of paper.

“Mr. President!” Birdbright gasped, holding the sheet up. “The report! It just came in!”

“And?” Ogg said, raising a bushy eyebrow impatiently.

“I glanced at it in the elevator. Product failure, sir. Munoz was electrocuted when his waterbed sprung a leak. Apparently the water touched a hot wire.”

“Just as the meckie said. . . . ”

“What was that, sir?” Birdbright rubbed a fat cheek nervously with one finger.

“Nothing, nothing. Get the committees set up first thing tomorrow. I want a full investigation into—”

“Mr. President, Munoz was found in an embrace with Colonel Peebles.”

“Dammit,” President Ogg said, his enthusiasm deflated. “Can’t afford a scandal. Not with the election tomorrow.”

“What shall we do, Mr. President?”

“Keep the committees out of this one.” Ogg scowled, hardly believing he had spoken these words. “We can’t release this to the public. Don’t mention it to anyone.”

“It WAS a product failure, sir, and they are entitled to posthumous Purple Badges.”

“I suppose that’s true. Uncle Rosy wouldn’t want them denied full honors.”

“That’s right, Mr. President.”

“We’ll set up a different scenario for their deaths,” Ogg said, smiling as if a light had just gone on inside his head.

Birthright’s smile reflected that of his superior. “Another product failure, sir?”

Ogg nodded. “Have the bodies placed in Munoz’s autolimo after dark tonight. The car is to be pushed off Saint Patrick’s Bridge. That’s on a little-used road near Lake Ovett.”

“And the death certificates will be documented to show the story the way you want it told.”

“Correct.” Ogg turned toward the autocopter.

“Brilliant, Mr. President!”

“That’s why I’m Head of State, Billie,” Ogg said, beaming proudly. He short-stepped into Autocopter One. The machine’s rotors whirred to life.

During the flight home, Ogg worried over the decision he had just made.
The Black Box couldn’t have arranged the waterbed failure,
he thought, nervously.
Surely they would have made the deaths more palatable . . . more readily acceptable to the public.

But as the autocopter prepared to land at a private helipad on the landscaped roof of his condominium building, it occurred to Ogg that the Black Box of Democracy may have wished to discredit Bu-Mil, feeling too much power had gravitated to that arm of government.

Did I interfere?
he thought.
Will I incur the wrath of the Black Box?

Autocopter One made a crisp landing on top of the building.

It was late Monday afternoon when the Inter-Orbital Transport Vehicle picked up Sidney’s passenger module.

“We’re only a few hours from Saint Elba now,” the blind man sitting across from Sidney said.

“That so?” The retardo woman seated next to the blind man smile-grimaced as she spoke.

“I remember not so awfully long ago,” the blind man said, “when it took much longer . . . before G-gas allowed passengers to travel at high speeds.”

Sidney leaned forward to touch the blind man on his bulky arm and asked: “Were you in the Space Patrol?”

“I sure was!” the blind man said, excitedly. His wraparound sunglasses slipped. He adjusted them. Then his voice slowed and the words slurred as he added, “Until we had an explosion. . . . I was checking an argonium gas leak in the E-Cell compartment of a turbo-bomber hangared at New City Field. . . . ”

“You were in maintenance?”

“Uh huh. Left pilotry to the glamour boys.”

“You were lucky to survive an explosion.”

“Funny thing,” the blind man said. “I remember seeing a brilliant flash of orange light. They found me fifty meters away. Didn’t have a scratch on me, but the eyes were gone.”

Sidney stared at the blind man for several minutes without thinking of anything to say. He did not want to sound patronizing and was afraid Javik would not want him to mention the important mission they were going to share.
This is a stranger,
Sidney thought.
He may be a spy.

The blind man kept his face pointed in Sidney’s direction for a couple of minutes, and Sidney saw the man’s lips quiver twice, as if he had a thought but then decided against saying anything. Presently, the blind man turned his face away from Sidney, and his features grew rigid.

Most of the passengers slept during the IOTV flight. They leaned on one another or against walls. A few found places on the floor to curl up in tight balls. Sidney dozed off too, for short periods. Each time he woke up, he looked at the blind man.

The blind man continued to stare straight ahead, or Sidney assumed he was staring behind the dark wraparound sunglasses.

“No more bathroom privileges for clients!” a female attendant called out at one point. “All clients wait until Saint Elba!” Sidney recognized the voice. It was the same attendant he had heard earlier at the field . . . the one with the cruel voice.

“Our Johns are on the fritz and the lousy bastards don’t wanna touch the same toilet seats we do!” the blind man yelled.

“How much longer?” clients called out.

“Three hours more,” an attendant replied. Presently Sidney heard “two hours,” then “one hour.” The quarters began to smell of ammonia and excrement to Sidney, and in the close hotness he felt he might throw up at any moment. He too had to use the bathroom, but tried to think of other things.

The side porthole over his seating area occupied his attention almost totally during the last hour of flight. Sidney pressed his face against the glass, trying to get a first glorious glimpse of the habitat. The porthole was prismatic, allowing him to see forward along the ship’s course by adjusting a wall-mounted lever.

In the blackness of space ahead, Sidney knew one of the bright stars was not really a star. He watched until one began to grow dramatically in brightness.

The Saint Elba habitat!
he thought, realizing it was reflecting sunlight from its position between the orbits of the Earth aid the Moon. Gradually the habitat’s brilliance far exceeded that of the stars beyond. Then it became a narrow band of reflected sunlight.

Within minutes; Sidney could make out identifying features. He recognized the burnished solar collector suspended above Saint Elba, and then the central hub, spokes and tubular outer rim. Saint Elba appeared to be graceful and serene, at once in harmony with itself and with the heavens.

For a time, Sidney was surprised at how small Saint Elba appeared, but as the IOTV matched the habitat’s orbit and approached, he began to realize the immensity of the structure. A thick glassplex and titanium outer rim resembled a balloon bicycle tire. He saw twinkling lights and buildings through glassplex on one side of the outer rim, then lost sight of the interior as the IOTV dipped to the habitat’s south side.

“Note that the spokes are rotating about the central hub,” an attendant said. ‘This creates pseudo-gravity in the outer rim.”

The attendant spoke while looking through another porthole two meters to Sidney’s left. Sidney looked at him, saw folds of pink flesh popping out of the man’s smock and hanging over his belt.

“I don’t see any movement in the outer rim,” Sidney said, raising his voice to be heard over the rustlings of people who were awakening.

“A thick cosmic shield is on this side,” the attendant said, glancing at Sidney. “The habitat rotates inside it. That shield is made of millions of metric tons of compacted Moon slag and dust.”

Sidney nodded appreciatively and peered out the porthole again. The IOTV moved to a position on the south side of the orbiter’s sextagonal hub to wait with another ship that was about to dock.

Sidney barely made out the name of the other craft.
The Shamrock Five,
he read, recognizing it as an Akron class long-range space cruiser.
Hey! That’s my ship!

Being faster than standard transport craft, the Shamrock Five arrived at Saint Elba almost simultaneously with the IOTV carrying Sidney.

“You have priority, Shamrock Five,” the radio on Javik’s command console blared. “We’ll bring you in.”

Alone in the cockpit, Javik mentoed the Auto-Docking Mode, scanned the blinking lights and glowing dials of the instrument panel.

From the IOTV standing by several hundred meters away, Sidney watched Javik’s ship enter the docking tunnel.
Just coax ‘er in, Tom,
Sidney thought, seeing a tiny form in the cockpit of the sleek black and silver ship.
What a beauty!
Then Sidney recalled what Javik had done for him at the reunion and glanced down at his twisted arm.

It twitched.

Why would Tom want ME?
Sidney wondered, feeling self-pity.
He said I’d he treated here first
—Sidney thought of Carla now, and of his former co-workers, neighbors and friends . . . people he might never see again.

At the same instant, Javik thought of Sidney. Maybe Javik half-noticed a round-faced fellow with curly black hair peering out of a porthole on that IOTV, but surely it was too far away for recognition. Still, Javik too reflected upon the reunion, and looked forward to his rendezvous with Sidney on Saint Elba.

They’d better turn him over to me without a runaround,
Javik thought,
or somebody’s going to wish he didn’t get in my way. . . .

The Shamrock Five was drawn by titanium magne-drive deep into Saint Elba’s cavernous docking tunnel. Squinting under the glare of exterior docking spotlights, Javik said to himself, “So far so good.”

He flipped on the console screen and checked four outside views of the docking operation. “No problems,” he murmured.

“Docking five hundred meters,” the onboard computer announced.

“Passenger cabin view,” Javik instructed, leaning forward to speak into a speakercom.

The screen flickered and showed Madame Bernet seated alone in the ten-seat passenger cabin, eating a sandwich.
Nice feature,
he mused.
Wonder how the meckie processes the food.
As the meckie finished the sandwich, it licked its fingers.

Javik looked away for a moment to watch the dock come into view, a broad, dimly-lit platform with several ships tethered at the sides.
I’ll take a trouble detector through the ship tomorrow before liftoff,
he thought.
I don’t want to leave the cockpit with that sub-human wandering around.

As his eyes darted back to the console screen, Javik saw Madame Bernet staring directly at the camera.
She seems to know I’m watching. How in the hell?
. . . He flipped off the screen, and it went dark.

Maybe the damned thing IS human,
he thought, reflecting on the way the meckie continually stared at him.
And it has the hots for me.
Javik realized this was a feeble attempt at levity, and he felt uncomfortable.

“Docking two hundred fifty meters,” the computer reported.

Let’s see,
he thought, planning his activities of the following day.
I’ll look at the ejection pods and other safety equipment. That would be through hatch seventeen
—

Javik saw the docking platform clearly now. He watched dockworkers in white bubble suits as they scurried about on moto-boots.

Saint Elba’s magne-drive turned the Shamrock Five to one side, and the ship began to approach the dock sideways. Presently the ship jerked, then rocked gently and settled into place in its padded docking slip.

As Javik and Madame Bernet rolled off the Shamrock Five onto Saint Elba’s shadowy docking platform, Madame Bernet yawned. The meckie stretched, locked its fingers together and cracked the knuckles. “God, I’m drained,” it said. ‘Took a couple of sleep-sub pills in flight, but now all I can think about is a nice soft bed.”

For Christ’s sake,
Javik thought.
This meckie is overplaying its part!

Low-wattage light standards dotted the platform, providing enough illumination to cast weak shadows of the two as they rolled side by side toward an arched doorway. As they rolled through the doorway into a more brightly lit area, a loudspeakered woman’s voice announced: “Welcome, brave crewmen! I am Mayor Nancy Ogg.”

Javik focused on an illuminated glassplex viewing area above them. “There,” he said, nodding his head in the direction of the viewing area. “She’s a looker, too!” Javik realized too late that this was the sort of sentiment he used to share with Brent Stafford. He missed Stafford.

“I see her,” Madame Bernet said.

“Decontamination showers are directly ahead of you,” Mayor Nancy Ogg said. “The inconvenience is necessary, since we must be concerned about the tiniest micro-organisms brought in from outside.” She paused and added, “But you understand this.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Javik replied with a cordial grin. “I most certainly do.”
They’re worried about Zero-G Plague,
he thought.
No one dares speak of it because of space superstition.
He recalled that it had been almost three decades since the epidemic at Saint Michaels killed sixty-six thousand people. . . . Stringent decontamination procedures had been established after that.

Javik watched as Madame Bernet entered a women’s shower room silently.
Wonder if she’ll rust,
he thought.