Moon Flights

Welcome to Wheel Days

Murray and Steve were down under the floor, digging out last year’s leftover flyers for the festival when the speaker clicked. I slammed my hand on the off button and continued what I was doing, calculating how many porta-potties we could afford to hire from Simmons Sewer Service. Our Ecosystems Chief Engineer insists that he can’t let the festival crap (the technical term in this colony) run through the usual pipes, just in case some idiot visitor eats lead or mercury or some other heavy metal that would poison the weedbeds. So every year we have this problem. You just can’t run a festival without porta-potties, and with the gravity gradient in LaPorte-Centro-501, that means three separate sets of them, sexed. We never have enough, and we always have complaints, chiefly from uptowners near the core, who go into jittering fits if some stranger in a hotsuit knocks on their door and wants to use the inside can. I will admit, low-grav mistakes are the hardest to clean up, but still you’d think they’d understand why the festival is so important. If LaPorte-Centro-501 continues to grow, we all benefit.

Murray crawled out with the dance flyers. All we had to do was change the year and the day; we were having the Jinnits again for lead band, and Dairy and the Creamers for backup. Some people complain about that, but Murray’s old buddy Conway is the keyboard man for Jinnits, and they’ll come here without a guarantee. We don’t get soaked if a solar flare keeps everyone home. So far that’s saved us a bit more than I’d like to confess, when we’re talking here about a successful annual festival that draws crowds from all over the Belt. And Dairy’s local; the Creamers play at Hotshaw’s all year ’round, and everyone likes them well enough. The flyers looked pretty good; I nodded and Murray racked them into the correction bracket and went to work. Steve was still out of sight, but I could hear him scrunching around in the insulation.

That’s when the speaker clicked on again, and I didn’t get my hand on the off button in time. “Radio relay message,” said the voice, and I sighed. Nobody I wanted to talk to was going to be calling me for another week. I punched for a hard copy, rather than voice, and watched the little strip of paper come zipping out the groove. It’s not really paper, of course—paper is precious—but it acts like paper. You can write on it. I tore it off and crammed it into a pocket without looking at it. That was a mistake.

The parade flyers Steve had gone after were all unusable; something had leaked and frozen into them. We had the old master, and we refilled the crawl space with insulation, then set up the master for a print run. I crossed my fingers, assumed five percent more attendance than last year, and ordered another set of porta-potties. Next up were the day’s parade and display entries.

I don’t want to overdo this about how hard it is to do things in the colonies—that’s not my point—but a simple little annual festival like you’d run with maybe fifteen or twenty volunteers back on a planet is not so simple on the inside of a hollow ball with a gravity gradient from zip to norm. Take parades. LaPorte-Centro-501 was built in two helices, like most of the cored colonies. The only way to route a parade all through town is rim to core to rim again in the other helix pattern, and that means everything has to go through all the gravity gradients twice. Ever try to design a float for variable gravity, not to mention spin? We keep the kiddy parades in near-normal gravity, all around the base of Alpha Helix one year, and Beta the next, and run the main parade from 0.25 to 0.25 through the core. That way the floats really float, but they don’t have to contend with heavy stress.

Right now the parade entries were looking a bit thin. Central Belt Mining & Exploration would have a float: they always did. Usually it was something “pioneering,” an adventure still-life. FARCOM would bring a communications satellite mounted on a robotic flying horse (they alternated that one and a float with two robots using tin cans and a string). Holey Bey, our nearest neighbor (and a nasty neighbor, for that matter), was sending two floats, they said. I scowled at that, and wondered if they were going to try to smuggle in another gang of ruffians. Four years ago they’d disrupted our parade with screaming youths in blood-red hotsuits who made off with parts of other people’s floats. Almost cost us the whole profit of the festival. (I know, you’ve seen Holey Bey’s brochures in the colonial offices: that fake beach, with luscious bathing beauties backed by handsome neo-Moorish arches. Forget it. Their chief engineer was a drunken incompetent who couldn’t hook one helix with another, their plumbing leaks, and they’re infested with mammalian vermin. Even dogs. I know; I took our float over there for “Back to Bey Days” and it was disgusting.)

Anyway, we had to have at least sixty entries to make the main parade work. Sixty full-size entries. No matter how you handle core, it’s big, and a parade can look pretty damn puny out there, drifting across the very-low-gee gap. Back on Earth you get horse freaks to fill in the gaps with horses (at least I suppose that’s why they’re in parades, to fill up the gaps: they have that advantage of turning sideways to take up less room, or lengthways to take up more). But of course we don’t have horses on LaPorte-Centro-501, and even Holey Bey wouldn’t harbor big dirty mammals like that. I called up the parade file, added today’s entries, and muttered. Thirty-nine, and five of those were small marching groups. I looked at the schedule for our float to see who might come.

That’s how it works, of course. We send our float (“Miss LaPorte-Centro-501 and her Court… Rolling Along to Wheel Days”) to other colonies’ festivals, and they send theirs to us. Back to Bey Days. Rockham Cherry Festival (they don’t have cherries, but it sounds good). Pioneer Days (two a year, one at each end of the settlement, and very different: Vladimir Korsygyn-233 is a Soviet colony). It’s about like you’d see on Earth: every colony has its festival, and everybody sends a float. There are differences, to be sure. We don’t actually send our float everywhere; the shipping fees would break us. We send a holo of the new design each year and hire a construct crew in whatever colony it is. Miss LaPorte-Centro-501 and her Court do travel to the nearer communities; beyond that we audition and pay standard rates to local talent.

You may wonder why our festival is “Wheel Days.” I don’t want to grab credit from anyone, but actually that was my idea. The whole Belt, it’s like a big wheel, and the Settlement like a smaller wheel riding its rim. Our conviction is that LaPorte-Centro-501 will grow into its motto: “The Hub of the Industrial Center of the Solar System.” You don’t need to laugh… it could happen. Something will be the hub, and it might as well be us. We have talent, room to grow, resources, skilled labor, willingness to work… and most of all, we have vision.

That’s how come we have Wheel Days, and nobody’s laughed for the last nine years. We have the most successful annual festival for a community our size in the Settlement. And that’s a big job. Everyone has two major assignments and half a dozen little ones, and of course we’re all still employed, though some of our employers cut us some slack now and then. As for me, being junior vice president of Mutual Savings & Loan, I could spend pretty much my whole time on it, which is good because it took that and more. If you aren’t a Chamber member, wherever you are, then you can’t understand just how frantic those last weeks are. No matter how you plan all year (and if you don’t plan all year, you don’t have a good festival) something always comes unglued. Several somethings.

Our float came apart in a spin vortex at Rimrock, and we were charged with Insufficient Construction. (Luckily our insurance company’s lawyers found we had a case against the designated construct company for fraud, and none of the young ladies on the float were hurt.) Still, the accident might deter some parade entries at our end. Simmons Sewer reported that they couldn’t fill all the porta-potty order because they had just gotten a contract from Outreach Frames (the big shipbuilding firm). Conway, Murray’s friend in Jinnits, broke up with his wife and threatened to leave the band; the band leader called Murray and said that if Conway left him in the lurch he wasn’t about to do any favors for Conway’s buddies. And so on.

It wasn’t until three days before the opening that I wore the light blue zipsuit again, and heard something crackle in the breast pocket. I fished it out and found the message tape I’d never read. Now I read it.

In-laws are an old joke, right? That’s because so many of them are just like the stories. My wife Peg is sweet, loving, bright, independent, and not half-bad-looking, either. But her brothers—! There’s James Perowne, who’s a drunk, and Gerald LaMott, who’s probably the reason why James is a drunk, and then there’s Ernest. Ernest Dinwiddie, if you can believe it, which I couldn’t when I first met him, and I laughed, and he never forgave me. He suits his name, is the best I can say for him, and it isn’t much.

The way Peg and I get along, you’d think I’d like her brothers and they’d like me, but that’s not how it is. James will fling a half-pickled arm around my shoulders and breathe beery sighs at me about his lovely little sister while I hold my breath and try not to slug him. Gerald sits hunched behind something (table, computer, desk… a pillow if all else fails), staring at me with little bright eyes out from under his dark brows and expecting me to make an ass of myself. Peg says she never could play a piece on the piano (and she’s good) when Gerald was staring at her. He has that way of looking at you, expecting you to fail, almost longing for you to fail, and then you do. And then there’s Ernest.

Ernest is in middle management at Central Belt Mining & Exploration. He’s told us about it, and about how important middle management is, and how important Central Belt Mining & Exploration is. Well, I know that. Anyone in finance in the Belt knows how important CBM&E is. He explained to Peg exactly why she shouldn’t marry me, and to me exactly why I wasn’t worthy of her, and from time to time he shows up to explain what we’ve done wrong between the last visit and this one. He asks detailed questions about every aspect of our lives, and gives the impression that he’d like to hire investigators to verify our answers.

Also he can’t take a hint. Most people, if you tell them that you’re going to be busy the weekend they want to visit, will shrug and say too bad and go on. Not Ernest. He showed up in the middle of our honeymoon, to see how things were going. He brought his whole family to help celebrate my fortieth birthday (when Peg and I had planned to spend a weekend alone, having farmed Gordie out with her best friend Lisa). For the past three years or so, we’d managed to avoid him by being “gone” when he came to LaPorte-Centro-501. This time we were stuck.

He was coming, the message strip said, on August 24, the day that Wheel Days opened, because he was sure we’d be there for Wheel Days. He was on his way in-system for a management seminar, with his wife Joyce and their three kids. They wanted to see us and would be there sometime during Dayshift. Even in hard copy from a radio relay, Ernest’s usual accusing tone was coming through. And by this time they were four days out from Central Station One (the Company’s own headquarters colony, as he made sure we knew), and there was no way I could stop them. That’s what I got for not reading that message the month before.

I called Peg, and she reacted about how I expected. She’s often said she married someone as unlike her brothers as possible. I held the earphone a foot away until she calmed down a little.

“We can hide out in the Wheel Days confusion,” she suggested finally.

“They know where we live; they’ll just camp outside the door.”

“We could stay with Lisa…”

“Lisa’s already having company, remember?” So were we, for that matter, and Peg and I both said, “What about the Harrisons?” at the same moment.

“I can’t tell them not to come,” Peg wailed. “I want to see them. We have fun together. Not only that… we won’t have room.”

“I’ll find Ernest’s bunch a room somewhere else,” I said, but I was worried. We really haven’t built our tourism industry up where we’d like to see it, Wheel Days filled the hotels—overfilled them—and by this time I doubted I could find anything but the most expensive suites still available.

“They are not coming here,” Peg said, with a hint of Brother Ernest’s heavyhanded determination. Then she hung up. Murray came to tell me that Conway had rejoined the Jinnits, but had gotten drunk in the ship on its way from Gone West and given his ex-wife two black eyes. She wasn’t filing charges, but the ship’s captain was, and wouldn’t release him without a guarantee from an employer: the ship’s captain was a Neo-Feminist, and wouldn’t tolerate spouse (or ex-spouse) abuse. The band didn’t count, because apparently the captain considered them a contributing influence, and had already fined them. And of course without Conway, the Jinnits wouldn’t sound like the Jinnits, and our main stage attraction would be no attraction at all. Murray wouldn’t meet my eyes, even though it wasn’t his fault, and we both knew it. But everyone also knew that he was why we had the Jinnits at all.

By the time I’d straightened that out, it was six hours later and the last hotel room was long gone, at any price. I leaned a little on Bennie Grimes, manager of the Startowers, but he knew and I knew that the favors he owed me weren’t worth kicking a corporate executive out of his room and alienating the entire company. And no one I knew—no one—had room at home. Everyone with spare rooms invited guests or rented them out; the last of the home-rentals had cleared the computer weeks ago.

That left the Campground, and I knew exactly what Ernest was going to say about that. You can’t run a festival by turning people away, so when rooms were full we signed transients into the Campground… a vast, barren storage bay aired up for a week (it takes that long to get it above freezing), and divided into “campsites” with bright plastic streamers. For about the cost of a cheap room in town, we rent bubbletents, furnished with cheap inflatable seats and sleepsacks. Big tents, too—bigger than the rooms you’d get in most hotels, plenty of room to sleep the whole family. It’s kind of a long walk from the Campground in toward the core, so we have some extra entertainment out there. A few clown/juggler acts, a little carnival with rides for the kids, that sort of thing. And we have one day of the games right next to the Campground: the penny toss, the ring-dunk, the disk golf tournament.

Some people even prefer the Campground, and reserve a favorite spot (“Aisle 17, lot D, next to the big bathroom with the sunken tubs”) year after year. You can be sure you’ll be next to friends. The traffic isn’t as bad. It’s less expensive than anything but the cheapest Portside hotels. One group of old-timers from Wish & Chips holds reunions there; they say it’s like going back to the old days before the shells were built up, and they sit around singing sentimental pioneer ballads.

But Ernest in the Campground… we’d never live it down. Yet it was that or have him and his family crammed into our place with us and the Harrisons and only two toilets. The memory of my fortieth birthday, when instead of a long, relaxed bath and bed with Peg I ended up defending the right of independent investors to organize savings & loan associations, while Ernest’s kids tore into Gordie’s things and trashed his carefully organized Scout files, hardened my resolution. I reserved the best space I could find (Aisle 26, lot X), and paid the advance on a deluxe camping outfit so that it would be set up and waiting. I didn’t figure that having a two-room inflated habitat with full cable connections would really soothe Ernest down, but it was the best I could do. I also recorded a message for him and left it in the Port message center. It would tell him where to go, and apologize for this inconvenience.

Then I went back into battle with Simmons Sewer Service. Our contract predated the one they had with the shipbuilders, I said firmly, and they had no valid legal reason to back out. We went back and forth awhile, and came up still three complete sets of porta-potties short (eighteen units: three grav levels, both sexes) even after they said they guessed they could haul some on tomorrow’s oreloader from Teacup 311, where they had just finished a contract. At least I’d originally ordered more than last year, so we weren’t behind as far as it seemed.

Then it was only two days to go. By this time, of course, the main structure is in place. Anything that isn’t is lost, and you can’t change it till next year. Main Parade was still a little skimpy, a bare sixty entries with those seven (by now) marching units, but we usually picked up a few extras the last day, as people came in and saw the competition. In fact, we kept three or four blank floats set up in storage, ready for last-minute spray-painting and decoration as desired. The Kiddy Parades always had problems, but none you could anticipate, since any child who showed up at the beginning could join the parade: that was the rule. All the ribbons and trophies for the games had arrived on schedule.

The candidates for Miss LaPorte-Centro-501 were even now being interviewed by the judges for poise and personality; we had enough entrants for a good pageant, and plenty of contracts for the losers to ride floats representing distant colonies (which keeps losers happy; and unlike some colonies, we don’t let outsiders haggle over our girls: we have them draw lots for the available contracts). The Scoutmasters had their assignments for traffic control and information booths. We’ve found that strangers will accept direction from a neatly uniformed kid when they’ll argue with an adult cop. We started that about ten years ago, and now most colonies use the kids as traffic control and guides during their festivals.

Going through all this and checking what still had to be done took several hours, interrupted by calls from everyone who could find a line. Or that’s what it seemed like, with people asking things like “When are the opening ceremonies?” (on the flyers, not to mention broadcast on video!) and “What are you going to do about the construction mess behind the middle school on Alpha Helix?” which had nothing to do with us, or the festival, and was the sole responsibility of the Alpha Helix School Board. It did look tacky, but it wasn’t my fault. Peg’s a Board trustee, not me. I gave that caller her work extension, and went on to someone who demanded to know why the official garbage pickup was two hours late.

Sometime after lunch the ship from Gone West docked, and my earlier fix of that band problem came unglued again. Seems that the Jinnits agent on board got into an argument with the captain about how much fine had been assessed to the band, rather than to Conway personally. By this time the captain was fairly tired of the Jinnits band, from drums to keyboard and back again, and she expressed this in my ear with some force, offering to space the lot of them if I didn’t do something. Murray, of course, had disappeared as soon as he saw me mouth “Jinnits…” I swore up and down that the Jinnits did indeed have a contract engagement, that they had a good record on this colony and had never been in a fight that I knew of, that we would guarantee (how I didn’t know) that they wouldn’t cause any trouble for the ship’s crew should the crew stay for Wheel Days. To which, of course, I lavishly invited them.

Somewhere in the next twenty-four hours, which you might think would be the worst, is a lull—never at the same point two years running—when for six hours or so everything seems to hang on a knob of time and wait. All the committee chairs were exhausted but triumphant. What could be done had been done, and we all looked at each other and wondered what we’d see four days later, when the whole thing was over. A hush settled over the Chamber offices. Peg and Gordie and I had a last quiet meal (no ringing phones!), and I even lay down with my shoes off for a brief nap.

Finally it was opening day, with two hours to go before the Chairman cut the ribbon for the official start of Wheel Days, and everything I’d worked for as President of the Chamber this past year was out there on the line. I had already been in the office for three hours, checking in that last shipment of porta-potties, and making sure that they got where they needed to go. Checking on the bands (Dairy and the Creamers were peacefully eating breakfast; the Jinnits hadn’t come out of their suite yet). Checking to make sure that the Scouts had picked up their armbands (green wheels on a blue background) and directional flags (green arrows on blue). Taking a look into the low-grav storage bays where the floats constructed here are aligned for the parade start. Finding an emergency ground crew to help with someone’s unexpected float being unloaded at the Port, and entering it into the parade as entry 62 (61 had come in overnight). Racing home when I realized that I’d never changed from my worksuit the night before, and had to be in some kind of dress outfit for the Opening.

I got to the opening ceremonies just in time, and was glad to see that Connie Lee (our veep this year) was standing by in case I didn’t make it. Last year’s Miss LaPorte-Centro-501 posed gracefully beside the large silver wheel tied with a bright green ribbon. First came the Colony Chair’s speech (short: that’s one reason we elected Sam), then my speech (“Welcome to Wheel Days”), and then he cut the ribbon and Lori Belhausen took a good hold on the wheel and shoved it into motion. And then I went on with the rest of the welcome: “Rolling into the future with the Wheel of Progress, right here at LaPorte-Centro-501, the Hub of the Industrial Center of the Solar System.” And it doesn’t sound a bit silly, coming over the speakers like that, with the silver wheel flashing in the lights and Lori grinning for all the cameras.

It was when the candidates for this year’s Miss LaPorte-Centro-501 honors came out to be cheered and photographed, and to toss handfuls of little gilt wheels into the audience, that I remembered that I’d forgotten to include something in my message to Ernest. I hadn’t warned him about the wheels.

It’s nothing unique. Lots of festivals have visitor requirements of the same sort. If you don’t carry a six-shooter (a paper cut-out is enough) at Gone West’s Pioneer Days, for example, you’ll be put in “jail” until you’re ransomed. They have a cute little cage you have to stand in, just outside the Lily Langtry Saloon, and everyone giggles and teases until you can persuade one of the honkytonk girls (if you’re male) or bartenders (if you’re female) to accept a donation for a kiss. They make a big deal of being persuaded, too, and the hapless prisoner has to do more than wave some money out the jail’s window. All proceeds go to the Vacuum Victims Fund, and most people take it as it’s meant, a big joke and a good way to earn money for the Fund.

At Wheel Days, we “arrest” everyone who enters the central festival area without a wheel… a pin, a dangler, something in the shape of a wheel, a circle with spokes. Most people simply pin on one of the hundreds of free wheels tossed into the crowd at the opening ceremonies, or handed out by any of the Miss LaPorte-Centro-501 contestants. It’s true that no one is told what the wheels are for, but most people know (or find out quickly). We’re lenient—we let a Shakespeare-revival streetdancer get by with a ruff—but we make a sizeable donation to the Vacuum Victims Fund every year. Anyway, I hadn’t warned Ernest… and I knew his attitude towards “commercial junk.” He would be the last person to pin on a cheap plastic gilt wheel for the fun of it.

I really meant to call the Port, but even before I left the platform a long snaky arm in cerise, fringed with silver, had wrapped firmly around my shoulders. “We got a problem, son,” said the raspy voice of the Jinnits lead singer, just as the crowd realized who that was and started oohing. I hardly had time to gulp before the Jinnits, all of them, whisked me away and into the nearest doorway.

I don’t pretend to understand musicians. I like music, sure, and Peg and I love to dance. But the way musicians think is beyond me. Murray’s had us over when Conway was visiting, and I always felt a little uncomfortable, knowing that he’s never sat behind a desk from nine to five in his entire life. Now I was surrounded by them, strange-looking people in bright, shimmery suits, with gold and silver fringe on arms and shoulders and hips and ankles. Cerise male and female, tangerine male and female, caution-yellow male and midnight blue male. All bright-eyed, all very alert, and all very upset about something.

As it turned out, they had three problems. Someone had put only two porta-potties in the cubbyholes off Main Stage, and they needed at least four (three M, one F) because they’d brought along a whole new stage crew, much bigger than last year. I gave myself a pat on the back for sequestering one set in the Chamber offices, and said I’ve have someone bring the others right away. That got me a nod from the female in cerise and the male in tangerine, but the band leader didn’t budge.

There was this ship captain, he said. I had formerly heard all of this from the ship captain’s point of view; now I heard it from the band’s. Conway, they agreed (patting Conway, whom I hadn’t recognized with this year’s hair-color and a shimmering yellow catsuit) had gone a little overboard with Zetta (the ex-wife), but it was mostly Zetta’s fault. She’d threatened to leave him for a fat-cat management type at Central Belt Mining & Exploration, who was going to get her a permanent position there. So Conway had put the moves on a corporate wife, being hurt and lonesome and willing to make some CBM&E husband unhappy in return, and then Zetta had had a row with her new lover and come tearing in to find Conway embracing what’shername. Some brunette with plenty of miles, the cerise female said admiringly, but a lot of horsepower under the hood. Conway nodded, at this point, and said she was made for more than a middle manager’s wife. No one said a word about the corporate wife’s husband. I thought of Peg, who in a hotsuit and hood could pass for twenty, and decided to keep her far away from Conway.

Zetta had already filed for divorce, but apparently she still considered Conway her property, because she had sent the brunette away in tears. Then on the voyage across, she had started a row with Conway in the ship’s bar, expressed herself in highly colored terms on the subject of his ancestry, his anatomy, and his eventual destination, and finally had thrown his own drink in his face. That’s when he hit her, but actually it was Shareen (the tangerine female) who blacked her eyes, because Zetta had elbowed Shareen in sensitive places and said “nasty things” about Shareen’s lover, who worked backstage. “Zetta deserved it,” said the band leader, and everyone else nodded.

“I was drunk,” said Conway, sadly.

“She deserved it anyway,” said the band leader, and everyone nodded again. “But this damn captain…” Seems the captain, as a Neo-Feminist, considered any female who wouldn’t file charges when assaulted to be in need of protection at best and permanent reeducation at most. She wouldn’t believe that Shareen had blacked Zetta’s eyes, and assumed that Shareen was another of Conway’s lovers, trying to take the rap for him. Zetta didn’t like being hit, but she liked even less being treated like a nincompoop. Shareen was furious because she’d never had an affair with Conway—she was gay, and proud of it. And now the captain was going around LaPorte-Centro-501, telling everyone that the Jinnits were a sexist band that no self-respecting Neo-Feminist would listen to, and the band was under a peace bond order (guaranteed by the Chamber, as their employer) and couldn’t fight back.

“I could kill that bitch,” said Shareen, looking me straight into the eye until I nodded agreement. “But it would break the bond, and our contract both, and you’d have no lead band, and we’d have no gig.”

And besides (third problem) there was Conway, who was depressed and miserable, and needed a girl to cheer him up so he could do his best. Nothing else would do, and brunette was preferable. Somebody (they all looked at me, intently) had to do something to stop that captain from ruining their reputation and their business, and somebody had to get Conway cheered up so he could play. Then they patted my arms and told me they’d be in their suite when I got it all straightened out.

I started by calling the Chamber offices and arranging to have the porta-potties moved. The captain hadn’t sounded very understanding on the radio, and I wasn’t at all sure how I could deal with her. We do have laws about libel, and also about inciting a riot, but what with the way colonies depend on spacers, you just can’t afford to alienate the people who run the ships. And for all I knew she’d claim it fell under religious freedom or something. I looked up Sarah Jolly Hollinshead, the Chamber’s top lawyer, on the schedule. She had volunteered to handle Campground registration this year. This was too important for a call: I’d have to go myself.

The Campground was already filling up. Colorful bubbletents sprouted from the storage bay floor. Sarah had a line maybe seven families long, and I knew better than to break in, even though she caught my eye and nodded to me. Justice must be seen to be done, as she keeps telling us. I stood there catching my breath after the droptube ride, and admired Sarah’s organization. She had two gofers with her, and really kept things moving along without seeming to hurry anyone. I moved up behind the family in front of me (by their T-shirt designs, recently from Teacup 311’s “Tea for Two Days”).

It wasn’t until I heard Joyce’s voice that I realized she was two families ahead of me in the line. I peeked. There was the back of her smooth dark head, looking very much as I remembered the back of her head looking, and there were the three kids (one niece, two nephews), some inches taller. They all held small travel bags. She was asking Sarah where to find Aisle 26, Lot X, as they had a reservation (which Sarah checked, before handing them a map), and then she asked where she could find me.

“Mr. Carruthers?” asked Sarah, as if she hadn’t heard that name before, but she said it loud enough for me to hear, in case I wanted to.

“My brother-in-law,” said Joyce. I started to back up and bumped into someone behind me, someone who turned out to be large and solid.

“Andrew Carruthers?” asked Sarah. I think she was trying to give me time to escape.

Joyce said, “He’s the President of your Chamber of Commerce,” in a tone of voice that implied Sarah was too far down the list to know that, and I saw Sarah stiffen.

The giant behind me read the name off my presidential seal and said, all too loudly, “I think someone’s looking for you, Mr. Carruthers.” And grinned at me. His gimme cap was from Holey Bey, and that figures. Troublemakers, that’s what they’ve got over there. Perverted humor.

I stepped out of line and went forward as if I hadn’t seen Joyce. When she turned around, I had a big smile ready.

“You came,” she said, as if she really wanted to see me. “I didn’t know if you’d find time…” But for once it didn’t sound accusing.

“Had to check on you,” I said genially, trying a smile on the kids. The girl, Cynthie, was looking around with some interest.

“What is this place?” asked the older boy.

“It’s a storage bay,” I said. “We make it a campground for Wheel Days.”

“It’s big,” said the girl. “We don’t have things like this in Central Station One.”

“We’re all built up,” said the boy. “This is great. I hope our tent is a long way across.” He pointed. Harris, that was his name, and the younger one, presently examining his toes, was Elliot.

“Andy, I hate to bother you,” began Joyce. “It’s about Ernest…”

“I’ll be with you in a second,” I said, “but I have to ask Sarah about something first—just came up on the way down.” Joyce nodded, collected the children, and moved off a few feet. Tactful of her, I thought, and then launched into a very fast précis of the Jinnits problem for Sarah. She folded her lip under her upper teeth, and hummed… a sound known to strike terror into the hearts of opposing attorneys. When I finished, she nodded once, and pushed back her chair.

“I’ll take care of it,” she promised. That was that. One did not ask Sarah how she planned to do things; she was not a committee sort of person. I went back to Joyce and the kids, and (for no good reason other than the manners I was brought up with) picked up her travel bag and led them toward their bubble. I should have been somewhere else, but what could I do?

To my surprise, the kids continued to show a livelier interest in the Campground than they ever had in our place. A strolling juggler chucked Cynthie under the chin and gave her a momentary crown of dancing colored balls, then moved on; she was delighted, and flushed, and altogether not the same girl who had demanded a different brand of breakfast cereal and insisted that our house smelled funny. Harris came to a halt outside one of the bubbletents, eyes fixed on the logo hanging from a snatchpole.

“That’s… that’s John Steward’s First Colony badge,” he said, breathless with adolescent awe.

“Some of the pioneers hold a reunion here,” I began, but he wasn’t listening. Steward himself had ducked out the door of his bubble and paused, finding himself impaled on Harris’s gaze. He nodded to the boy, gave me a half-wave, then ducked back inside. “He doesn’t talk to strangers much anymore,” I said, softening the blow. Harris didn’t notice.

“He nodded to me. Mom, he nodded to me. John Steward!” Then he turned to me. “You know him?”

“Not really,” I had to admit. “The oldtimers stick together pretty much. But I’ve listened to him at the Tall-Tales contest, and bought him a drink once or twice.”

“I didn’t know you knew John Steward,” Harris said. “I wish we came here more often. Does Gordie know him?”

“Probably better than I do,” I said, relaxing. The kids weren’t as bad as I’d thought. “John does a program for the Scout troops every year.”

Harris subsided, newly impressed with his cousin. Elliot had acquired a spring in his step, which indicated that things weren’t too bad for him, either.

“About Ernest,” Joyce began again. I tensed. “He’s in jail,” she said. “And I wondered…”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and started explaining about the wheels and the festival jail.

“I understand,” she said. “But it’s not that jail. It’s a real jail.”

“Ernest?” My mind fogged.

“It’s—I hate to explain—” She looked away. I glanced around, and saw that we were nearly at their bubble. Pointing it out and settling them into it distracted us both. Then she sent the kids to the nearest foodstand for a snack, and went on. “It’s not what it sounds like,” she began. “I met this musician…”

Lights flashed in my mind. “Conway?” I asked. “Of the Jinnits?”

She blushed. “How did you guess?” she asked. I couldn’t have explained, and nodded for her to go on. “Well, anyway, he was sad and lonesome—his wife had just run out on him with another man, he said. And I suspected that Ernest was having an affair.”

“With—?” I had a glimmer, but it seemed wildly improbable.

“I didn’t know, then. Someone younger, blonder, whatever. I thought maybe I could make him jealous, and Conway was so sweet, so… pathetic…” Her lashes drooped, and I felt a rush of sympathy. “Then… we were just relaxing together, there in the sauna, and in rushes this blonde viper!” Joyce’s voice had thinned and hardened; I could imagine it making holes in steel. “She grabbed my arm and threw me out, and screamed the most terrible things at us… threatened to tell Ernest…”

“Did she?”

“Not that I know of. Anyway, I went home, and Conway shipped out that night. And I was glad we were coming here, because I knew the Jinnits would play, and I might see Conway. Not anything serious, but… but he doesn’t think I’m too old…”

“Of course not,” I said gallantly, but worriedly.

“So when we got here, Ernest was—well, frankly Andy, he wasn’t too happy with this—the idea that you’d stuck us out here in the Campground. I tried to tell him you’d probably done it for the children—much better than a crowded hotel, where they wouldn’t have many people their own age. He kept insisting it was only because you hadn’t bothered to find us a place until the last minute.” I tried to look innocent as she glanced at me, then she went on. “We stopped on the way down to have something to eat. That’s when I saw the blonde—Conway’s friend or ex-wife or whatever she is—sitting up at the bar with two of the biggest black eyes I’ve ever seen. Frankly I was glad: she left bruises on my arm when she yanked me around. I wanted to hurry Ernest out of there, but he caught sight of her too… and he left me sitting there, just walked off, to go up to her.”

“Mmm.” Joyce had tears in her eyes when she looked at me.

“That’s right, Andy. She was the tart he was having an affair with. Ernest demanded to know who had blacked her eyes, and a spaceship captain across the room yelled ‘That bastard Conway,’ and Ernest—” She paused, looking down. “You know, Ernest really doesn’t get along with lots of people.”

“Who hit him?” I asked, not surprised at that revelation.

“He told the captain to mind her own business—he really doesn’t like women in authority—and she said it was her business since it happened on her ship. By this time she’d come up to the bar, and she said that the blonde—whatever her name is—”

“Zetta,” I said.

“I never knew,” said Joyce. “Anyway, that she—Zetta—was too enslaved to admit it was a man who hit her, and was trying to blame it on a woman. And Ernest said it was probably the captain, since she looked like the type, and she swung first, but he got in a couple of blows before he fell down. She filed charges, and he filed countercharges, and they’re both in jail.”

“Oh,” was all I could think of to say.

“I’m sorry,” said Joyce. “I guess I knew we shouldn’t come. We always seem to be in your way, somehow, and you’re awfully busy. I know you have important things to do. It’s just…”

“Oh, that’s all right.” It wasn’t all right, but for some reason the tight knot of apprehension that had bothered me since I read Ernest’s note was loosening. Ernest in jail—a real jail, and for brawling in a bar—was something I felt I could handle. Suddenly I wished Peg were there with me. I wanted to see her face when she heard that holier-than-anyone brother Ernest had started a fight in a bar.

“I’m really sorry,” said Joyce again. “I know we’re causing you a lot of trouble, and at the worst time. If it hadn’t been for me wanting to see Conway again…”

“Don’t see why not,” I said, suddenly reckless. Running any festival is a matter of dancing tiptoe on a tightrope with people throwing waterballoons at you. Crazier ideas than the one that came to me then had worked for others. “I can’t get Ernest out immediately,” I said, “not if he’s really assaulted someone. And in the meantime, the Jinnits tell me Conway isn’t playing up to his level because he’s lonesome.”

Her eyes began to sparkle. “I couldn’t… I mean, to seriously—”

“No, not seriously, but you certainly could go to the core dance tonight. After maybe eating dinner with the band. Couldn’t you? It would solve a big problem for me.”

“But the kids—”

I grinned at her. “Harris is crazy about oldtimers, right? I’ll bet he’d be glad to sit in on the first round of the Tall-Tales Competition, which is just three aisles over, where that big teepee is.”

It was not really that simple, of course. It never is. But anyone who can organize the annual festival of a growing community which is going to deserve to be called the hub of the industrial center of the solar system can finagle or squinch or maneuver his way past a few difficulties. With Joyce radiantly at his side (in a silver-lamé suit she’d borrowed from Zetta, after a tearful reconciliation), Conway didn’t even glance at Peg when she and I whirled past the Main Stage, with every curve of hers showing in her new scarlet hotsuit, Jinnits had never sounded better… and they’d already renewed their contract for next year, because, as the lead singer said, “I guess Murray’s not the only friend we’ve got on this colony.” Ernest would be out on bail the next morning; he had been pitifully grateful for my visit and promise of help, once he found that his Company legal insurance wasn’t good in our jurisdiction. And when we finally escorted Joyce back to the bubbletent, in the short end of Nightshift, we found four cheerful and excited youngsters—her three and our Gordie—who had been invited to share snacks with the oldest of the oldtimers, John Steward himself.

If I do say so myself, it was a good start to Wheel Days.