Between Planets

II "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin"

THE SCHOOL copter dumped him down at the Albuquerque field. He had to hurry to catch his rocket, as traffic control had required them to swing wide around Sandia Weapons Center. When he weighed in he ran into another new security wrinkle. "Got a camera in that stuff, son?" the weighmaster had inquired as he passed over his bags.

"No. Why?"

"Because we'll fog your film when we fluoroscope, that's why." Apparently X-ray failed to show any bombs hidden in his underwear; his bags were handed back and he went aboard-the winged-rocket Santa Fe Trail, shuttling between the Southwest and New Chicago. Inside, he fastened his safety belts, snuggled down into the cushions, and waited.

At first the noise of the blast-off bothered him more than the pressure. But the noise dopplered away as they passed the speed of sound while the acceleration grew worse; he blacked out.

He came to as the ship went into free flight, arching in a high parabola over the plains. At once he felt great relief no longer to have unbearable weight racking his rib cage, straining his heart, turning his muscles to water-but, before he could enjoy the blessed relief, he was aware of a new sensation; his stomach was trying to crawl up his gullet.

At first he was alarmed, being unable to account for the unexpected and unbearably unpleasant sensation. Then he had a sudden wild suspicion could it? Oh, no! It couldn't be... not space sickness, not to him. Why, he had been born in free fall; space nausea was for Earth crawlers, groundhogs!

But the suspicion grew to certainty; years of easy living on a planet had worn out his immunity. With secret embarrassment he conceded that he certainly was acting like a groundhog. It had not occurred to him to ask for an antinausea shot before blast-off, though he had walked past the counter plainly marked with a red cross.

Shortly his secret embarrassment became public; he had barely time to get at the plastic container provided for the purpose. Thereafter he felt better, although weak, and listened half-heartedly to the canned description coming out of the loudspeaker of the country over which they were falling. Presently, near Kansas City, the sky turned from black back to purple again, the air foils took hold, and the passengers again felt weight as the rocket continued glider fashion on a long, screaming approach to New Chicago. Don folded his couch into a chair and sat up.

Twenty minutes later, as the field came up to meet them, rocket units in the nose were triggered by radar and the Santa F6 Trail braked to a landing. The entire trip had taken less time than the copter jaunt from the school to Alburquerque - something less than an hour for the same route eastward that the covered wagons had made westward in eighty days, with luck. The local rocket landed on a field just outside the city, next door to the enormous field, still slightly radioactive, which was both the main spaceport of the planet and the former site of Old Chicago.

Don hung back and let a Navajo family disembark ahead of him, then followed the squaw out. A movable slideway had crawled out to the ship; he stepped on it and let it carry him into the station. Once inside he was confused by the bustling size of the place, level after level, above and below ground. Gary Station served not merely the Santa Fe Trail, the Route 66, and other local rockets shuttling to the Southwest; it served a dozen other local lines, as well as ocean hoppers, freight tubes, and space ships operating between Earth and Circum-Terra Station-and thence to Luna, Venus, Mars, and the Jovian moons; it was the spinal cord of a more-than-world-wide empire.

Tuned as he was to the wide and empty New Mexico desert and, before that, to the wider wastes of space, Don felt oppressed and irritated by the noisy swarming mass. He felt the loss of dignity that comes from men behaving like ants, even though his feeling was not thought out in words. Still, it had to be faced-he spotted the triple globes of Interplanet Lines and followed glowing arrows to its reservation office.

An uninterested clerk assured him that the office had no record of his reservation in the Valkyrie. Patiently Don explained that the reservation had been made from Mars and displayed the radiogram from his parents. Annoyed into activity the clerk finally consented to phone Circum-Terra; the satellite station confirmed the reservation. The clerk signed off and turned back to Don. "Okay, you can pay for it here."

Don had a sinking feeling. "I thought it was already paid for?" He had on him his father's letter-of-credit but it was not enough to cover passage to Mars.

"Huh? They didn't say anything about it being prepaid."

At Don's insistence the clerk again phoned the space station. Yes, the passage was prepaid since it had been placed from the other end; didn't the clerk know his tariff book? Thwarted on all sides, the clerk grudgingly issued Don a ticket to couch 64, Rocket Ship Glory Road, lifting from Earth for Circum-Terra at 9:03:57 the following morning.

"Got your security clearance?"

"Huh? What's that?"

The clerk appeared to gloat at what was a legitimate opportunity to decline to do business after all. He withdrew the ticket. "Don't you bother to follow the news? Give me your ID."

Reluctantly Don passed over his identity card; the clerk stuck it in a stat machine and handed it back. "Now your thumb prints."

Don impressed them and said, "Is that all? Can I have my ticket?"

" `Is that all?' he says Be here about an hour early tomorrow morning. You can pick up your ticket then-provided the I.B.I. says you can." '

The clerk turned away. Don, feeling forlorn, did likewise. He did not know quite what to do next. He had told Headmaster Reeves that he would stay overnight at the Hilton Caravansary, that being the hotel his family had stopped at 18 years earlier and the only one he knew by name. On the other hand he had to attempt to locate Dr. Jefferson "Uncle Dudley"-since his mother had made such a point of it. It was still early afternoon; he decided to check his bags and start looking.

Bags disposed of, he found an empty communication booth and looked up the doctor's code, punched it into the machine. The doctor's phone regretted politely that Dr. Jefferson was not at home and requested him to leave a message. He was dictating it when a warm voice interrupted: "I'm at home to you, Donald. Where are you, lad?" The view screen cut in and he found himself looking at the somewhat familiar features of Dr. Dudley Jefferson.

"Oh I'm at the station, Doctor-Gary Station. I just got in."

"Then grab a cab and come here at once."

"Uh, I don't want to put you to any trouble, Doctor. I called because mother said to say goodbye to you." Privately he had hoped that Dr. Jefferson would be too busy to waste time on him. Much as he disapproved of cities he did not want to spend his last night on Earth exchanging politeness with a family friend; he wanted to stir around and find out just what the modern Babylon did have to offer in the way of diversion. His letter-of-credit was burning a hole in his pocket; he wanted to bleed it a bit.

"No trouble. See you in a few minutes. Meanwhile I'll pick out a fatted calf and butcher it. By the way, did you receive a package from me?" The doctor looked suddenly intent.

"A package? No."

Dr. Jefferson muttered something about the mail service. Don said, "Maybe it will catch up with me. Was it important?"

"Uh, never mind; we'll speak of it later. You left a forwarding address?"

"Yes, sir-the Caravansary."

"Well-whip up the horses and see how quickly you can get here. Open sky"

"And safe grounding, sir." They both switched off. Don left the booth and looked around for a cab stand. The station seemed more jammed than ever, with uniforms much in evidence, not only those of pilots and other ship personnel but military uniforms of many corps-and always the ubiquitous security police. Don fought his way through the crowd, down a ramp, along a slidewalk tunnel, and finally found what he wanted. There was a queue waiting for cabs; he joined it.

Beside the queue was sprawled the big, ungainly saurian form of a Venerian "dragon." When Don progressed in line until he was beside it, he politely whistled a greeting.

The dragon swiveled one fluttering eyestalk in his direction. Strapped to the "chest" of the creature, between its forelegs and immediately below and in reach of its handling tendrils, was a small box, a voder. The tendrils writhed over the keys and the Venerian answered him, via mechanical voder speech, rather than by whistling in his own language. "Greetings to you also, young sir. It is pleasant indeed, among strangers, to hear the sounds one heard in the egg." Don noted with delight that the outlander had a distinctly Cockney accent in the use of his machine.

He whistled his thanks and a hope that the dragon might die pleasantly.

The Venerian thanked him, again with the voder, and added, "Charming as is your accent, will you do me the favor of using your own speech that I may practice it?"

Don suspected that his modulation was so atrocious that the Venerian could hardly understand it; he lapsed at once into human words. "My name is Don Harvey," he replied and whistled once more-but just to give his own Venerian name, "Mist on the Waters"; it had been selected by his mother and he saw nothing funny about it.

Nor did the dragon. He whistled for the first time, naming himself, and added via voder, "I am called `Sir Isaac Newton.' " Don understood that the Venerian, in so tagging himself, was following the common dragon custom of borrowing as a name of convenience the name of some earthhuman admired by the borrower.

Don wanted to ask "Sir Isaac Newton" if by chance he knew Don's mother's family, but the queue was moving up and the dragon was lying still; he was forced to move along to keep from losing his place in line. The Venerian followed him with one oscillating eye and whistled that he hoped that Don, too, might die pleasantly.

There was an interruption in the flow of autocabs to the stand; a manoperated flatbed truck drew up and let down a ramp. The dragon reared up on six sturdy legs and climbed aboard. Don whistled a farewell-and became suddenly and unpleasantly aware that a security policeman was giving him undivided attention. He was glad to crawl into his autocab and close the cover.

He dialed the address and settled back. The little car lurched forward, climbed a ramp, threaded through a freight tunnel, and mounted an elevator. At first Don tried to keep track of where it was taking him but the tortured convolutions of the ant hill called "New Chicago" would have made a topologist dyspeptic; he gave up. The robot cab seemed to know where it was going and, no doubt, the master machine from which it received its signals knew. Don spent the rest of the trip fretting over the fact that his ticket had not yet been turned over to him, over the unwelcome attention of the security policeman, and, finally, about the package from Dr. Jefferson. The last did not worry him; it simply annoyed him to have mail go astray. He hoped that Mr. Reeves would realize that any mail not forwarded by this afternoon would have to follow him all the way to Mars.

Then he thought about "Sir Isaac." It was nice to run across somebody from home.

Dr. Jefferson's apartment turned out to be far underground in an expensive quarter of the city. Don almost failed to arrive; the cab had paused at the apartment door but when he tried to get out the door would not open. This reminded him that he must first pay the fare shown in the meter-only to discover that he had pulled the bumpkin trick of engaging a robot vehicle without having coins on him to feed the meter. He was sure that the little car, clever as it was, would not even deign to sniff at his letter-of-credit. He was expecting disconsolately to be carted by the machine off to the nearest police station when he was rescued by the appearance of Dr. Jefferson.

The doctor gave him coins to pay the shot and ushered him in. "Think nothing of it, my boy; it happens to me about once a week. The local desk sergeant keeps a drawer full of hard money just to buy me out of hock from our mechanical masters. I pay him off once a quarter, cumshaw additional. Sit down. Sherry?"

"Er, no, thank you, sir."

"Coffee, then. Cream and sugar at your elbow. What do you hear from your parents?"

"Why, the usual things. Both well and working hard and all that." Don looked around him as he spoke. The room was large, comfortable, even luxurious, although books spilling lavishly and untidily over shelves and tables and even chairs masked its true richness. What appeared to be a real fire burned in one corner. Through an open door he could see several more rooms. He made a high, and grossly inadequate, mental estimate of the cost of such an establishment in New Chicago.

Facing them was a view window which should have looked into the bowels of the city; instead it reflected a mountain stream and fir trees. A trout broke water as he watched.

"I'm sure they are working hard," his host answered. "They always do. Your father is attempting to seek out, in one short lifetime, secrets that have been piling up for millions of years. Impossible-but he makes a good stab at it. Son, do you realize that when your father started his career we hadn't even dreamed that the first system empire ever existed?" He added thoughtfully, "If it was the first." He went on, "Now we have felt out the ruins on the floor of two oceans-and tied them in with records from four other planets. Of course your father didn't do it all, or even most of it-but his work has been indispensable. Your father is a great man, Donald - and so is your mother. When I speak of either one I really mean the team. Help yourself to sandwiches."

Don said, "Thank you," and did so, thereby avoiding a direct answer. He was warmly pleased to hear his parents praised but it did not seem to be quite the thing to agree heartily.

But the doctor was capable of carrying on the conversation unassisted. "Of course we may never know all the answers. How was the noblest planet of them all, the home of empire, broken and dispersed into space junk? Your father spent four years in the Asteroid Belt-you were along, weren't you? - and never found a firm answer to that. Was it a paired planet, like Earth-Luna, and broken up by tidal strains? Or was it blown up?"

"Blown up?" Don protested. "But that's theoretically impossible-isn't it?"

Dr. Jefferson brushed it aside. "Everything is theoretically impossible, until it's done. One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen. Studied any mathematical philosophy, Don? Familiar with infinite universe sheafs and open-ended postulate systems?"

"Uh, I'm afraid not, sir."

"Simple idea and very tempting. The notion that everything is possible and I mean everything-and everything has happened. Everything. One universe in which you accepted that wine and got drunk as a skunk. Another in which the _ fifth_ planet never broke up. Another in which atomic power and nuclear weapons are as impossible as our ancestors thought they were. That last one might have its points, for sissies at least. Like me."

He stood up. "Don't eat too many sandwiches. I'm going to take you out to a restaurant where there will be food, among other things... and such food as Zeus promised the gods-and failed to deliver."

"I don't want to take up too much of your time, sir." Don was still hoping to get out on the town by himself. He had a dismaying vision of dinner in some stuffy rich man's club, followed by an evening of highfalutin talk. And it was his last night on Earth.

"Time? What is time? Each hour ahead is as fresh as was the one we just used. You registered at the Caravansary?"

"No, sir, I just checked my bags at the station."

"Good. You'll stay here tonight; we'll send for your luggage later." Dr. Jefferson's manner changed slightly. "But your mail was to be sent to the hotel?"

"That's right."

Don was surprised to see that Dr. Jefferson looked distinctly worried. "Well, we'll check into that later. That package I sent to you-would it be forwarded promptly?"

"I really don't know, sir. Ordinarily the mail comes in twice a day. If it came in after I left, it would ordinarily wait over until morning. But if the headmaster thought about it, he might have it sent into town special so that I would get it before up-ship tomorrow morning."

"Mean to say there isn't a tube into the school?"

"No, sir, the cook brings in the morning mail when he shops and the afternoon mail is chuted in by the Roswell copter bus."

"A desert island! Well... we'll check around midnight. If it hasn't arrived then-never mind." Nevertheless he seemed perturbed and hardly spoke during their ride to dinner.

The restaurant was misnamed The Back Room and there was no sign out to indicate its location; it was simply one of many doors in a side tunnel. Nevertheless many people seemed to know where it was and to be anxious to get in, only to be thwarted by a stern-faced dignitary guarding a velvet rope. This ambassador recognized Dr. Jefferson and sent for the maitre d'hotel. The doctor made a gesture understood by headwaiters throughout history, the rope was dropped, and they were conducted in royal progress to a ringside table. Don was bug-eyed at the size of the bribe. Thus he was ready with the proper facial expression when he caught sight of their waitress.

His reaction to her was simple; she was, it seemed to him, the most beautiful sight he had ever seen, both in person and in costume. Dr. Jefferson caught his expression and chuckled. "Don't use up your enthusiasm, son. The ones we have paid to see will be out there." He waved at the floor. "Cocktail first?"

Don said that he didn't believe so, thank you.

"Suit yourself. You are man high and a single taste of the flesh-pots wouldn't do you any permanent harm. But suppose you let me order dinner for us?" Don agreed. While Dr. Jefferson was consulting with the captive princess over the menu, Don looked around. The room simulated outdoors in the late evening; stars were just appearing overhead. A high brick wall ran around the room, hiding the non-existent middle distance and patching in the floor to the false sky. Apple trees hung over the wall and stirred in the breeze. An old-fashioned well with a well sweep stood beyond the tables on the far side of the room; Don saw another "captive princess" go to it, operate the sweep, and remove a silver pail containing a wrapped bottle.

At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels. Don had never seen one but he recognized its function; it was a Martian's "perambulator," a portable air-conditioning unit to provide the rare, cold air necessary to a Martian aborigine. The occupant could be seen dimly, his frail body supported by a metal articulated servo framework to assist him in coping with the robust gravity of the third planet. His pseudo wings drooped sadly and he did not move. Don felt sorry for him.

As a youngster he had met Martians on Luna, but Luna's feeble field was less than that of Mars; it did not turn them into cripples, paralyzed by a gravity field too painful for their evolutionary pattern. It was both difficult and dangerous for a Martian to risk coming to Earth; Don wondered what had induced this one. A diplomatic mission, perhaps?

Dr. Jefferson dismissed the waitress, looked up and noticed him staring at the Martian. Don said, "I was just wondering why he would come here. Not to eat, surely."

"Probably wants to watch the animals feeding. That's part of my own reason, Don. Take a good look around you; you'll never see the like again."

"No, I guess not-not on Mars."

"That's not what I mean. Sodom and Gomorrah, lad - rotten at the core and skidding toward the pit. `-these our actors, as I foretold you... are melted into air-' and so forth. Perhaps even `the great globe itself.' I tally too much. Enjoy it; it won't last long."

Don looked puzzled. "Dr. Jefferson, do you like living here?"

"Me? I'm as decadent as the city I infest; it's my natural element. But that doesn't keep me from telling a hawk from a handsaw."

The orchestra, which had been playing softly from nowhere in particular, stopped suddenly and the sound system announced "News flash!" At the same time the darkening sky overhead turned black and lighted letters started marching across it. The voice over the sound system read aloud the words streaming across the ceiling: BERMUDA: OFFICIAL: THE DEPARTMENT OF COLONIAL AFFAIRS HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE VENUS COLONIES HAS REJECTED OUR NOTE. A SOURCE CLOSE TO THE FEDERATION CHAIRMAN SAYS THAT THIS IS AN EXPECTED DEVELOPMENT AND NO CAUSE FOR ALARM.

The lights went up and the music resumed. Dr. Jefferson's lips were stretched back in a mirthless grip. "How appropriate!" he commented. "How timely! The handwriting on the wall."

Don started to blurt out a comment, but was distracted by the start of the show. The stage floor by them had sunk out of sight, unnoticed, during the news flash. Now from the pit thus created came a drifting, floating cloud lighted from within with purple and flame and rose. The cloud melted away and Don could see that the stage was back in place and peopled with dancers. There was a mountain in the stage background.

Dr. Jefferson had been right; the ones worth staring at were on the stage, not serving the tables. Don's attention was so taken that he did not notice that food had been placed in front of him. His host touched his elbow. "Eat something, before you faint."

"Huh? Oh, yes, sir!" He did so, busily and with good appetite but with his eyes on the entertainers. There was one man in the cast, portraying Tannhauser, but Don did not know and did not care whom he represented; he noticed him only when he got in the way. Similarly, he had finished two thirds of what was placed before him without noticing what he was eating.

Dr. Jefferson said, "Like it?"

Don did a double take and realized that the doctor was speaking of food, not of the dancers. "Oh, yes! It's awfully good." He examined his plate. "But what is it?"

"Don't you recognize it? Baked baby gregarian."

It took a couple of seconds for Don to place in his mind just what a gregarian was. As a small child he had seen hundreds of the little satyr-like bipeds-faunas gregariaus veneris Smythii-but he did not at first associate the common commercial name with the friendly, silly creatures he and his playmates, along with all other Venus colonials, had always called "move-overs" because of their chronic habit of crowding up against one, shouldering, nuzzling, sitting on one's feet, and in other ways displaying their insatiable appetite for physical affection.

Eat a baby, move-over? He felt like a cannibal and for the second time in one day started to behave like a groundhog in space. He gulped and controlled himself but could not touch another bite.

He looked back at the stage. Venusberg disappeared, giving way to a tired-eyed man who kept up a rapid fire of jokes while juggling flaming torches. Don was not amused; he let his gaze wander around the room. Three tables away a man met his eyes, then looked casually away. Don thought about it, then looked the man over carefully and decided that he recognized him. "Dr. Jefferson?"

"Yes, Don?"

"Do you happen to know a Venus dragon who calls himself `Sir Isaac Newton'?" Don added the whistled version of the Venerian's true name.

"Don't!" the older man said sharply.

"Don't what?"

"Don't advertise your background unnecessarily, not at this time. Why do you ask about this, uh, `Sir Isaac Newton'?" He kept his voice low with his lips barely moving.

Donald told him about the casual meeting at Gary Station. "When I got through I was dead sure that a security cop was watching me. And now that same man is sitting over there, only now he's not in uniform."

"Are you sure?"

"I think I'm sure."

"Mmm... you might be mistaken. Or he might simply be here in his off hours-though a security policeman should not be, not on his pay. See here, pay no further attention to him and don't speak of him again. And don't speak of that dragon, nor of anything else Venetian. Just appear to be having a good time. But pay careful attention to anything I say."

Don tried to carry out the instructions, but it was hard to keep his mind on gaiety. Even when the dancers reappeared he felt himself wanting to turn and stare at the man who had dampened the party. The plate of baked gregarian was removed and Dr. Jefferson ordered something for him called a "Mount Etna." It was actually shaped like a volcano and a plume of steam came out of the tip. He dipped a spoon into it, found that it was fire and ice, assaulting his palate with conflicting sensations. He wondered how anyone could eat it. Out of politeness he cautiously tried another bite. Presently he found that he had eaten all of it and was sorry there was not more.

At the break in the stage acts Don tried to ask Dr. Jefferson what he really thought about the war scare. The; doctor firmly turned the talk around to his parents' work and branched out to the past and future of the System. "Don't fret yourself about the present, son. Troubles, merely troubles-necessary preliminaries to the consolidation of the System. In five hundred years the historians will hardly notice it. There will be the Second Empire-six planets by then."

"Six? You don't honestly think well ever be able to do anything with Jupiter and Saturn? Oh-you mean the Jovian moons."

"No, I mean six primary planets. We'll move Pluto and Neptune in close by the fire and we'll drag Mercury back and let it cool off."

The idea of moving planets startled Don. It sounded wildly impossible, but he let it rest, since his host was a man who maintained that everything and anything was possible. "The race needs a lot of room," Dr. Jefferson went on. "After all, Mars and Venus have their own intelligent races; we can't crowd them much more without genocide-and it's not dead certain which way the genocide would work, even with the Martians. But the reconstruction of this system is just engineering - nothing to what else we'll do. Half a millennium from now there will be more Earth-humans outside this system than in it; we'll be swarming around every G-type star in this neighborhood. Do you know what I would do if I were your age, Don? I'd get me a berth in the Pathfinder."

Don nodded. "I'd like that." The Pathfinder, star ship intended for a one-way trip, had been building on, and near, Luna since before he was born. Soon she would go. All or nearly all of Don's generation had at least dreamed about leaving with her.

"Of course," added his host, "you would have to have a bride." He pointed to the stage which was again filling. "Take that blonde down there. She's a likely looking lassie-healthy at least."

Don smiled and felt worldly. "She might not hanker after pioneering. She looks happy as she is."

"Can't tell till you ask her. Here." Dr. Jefferson summoned the maitre d'hotel; money changed hands. Presently the blonde came to their table but did not sit down. She was a tom-tom singer and she proceeded to boom into Don's ears, with the help of the orchestra, sentiments that would have embarrassed him even if expressed privately. He ceased to feel worldly, felt quite warm in the face instead and confirmed his resolution not to take this female to the stars. Nevertheless he enjoyed it.

The stage was just clearing when the lights blinked once and the sound system again brayed forth: "Space raid warning! Space raid warning!" All lights went out.