Between Planets (2 page)

“I am.” Don stopped and explained, showing Jack the message from his parents.

Jack looked distressed. “I don’t like this. Of course I knew this was our last year, but I didn’t figure on you jumping the gun. I probably won’t sleep without your snores to soothe me. What’s the rush?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. The Head says that my folks have war jitters and want to drag their little darling to safety. But that’s silly, don’t you think? I mean, people are too civilized to go to war today.”

Jack did not answer. Don waited, then said sharply, “You agree, don’t you? There won’t be any war.”

Jack answered slowly, “Could be. Or maybe not.”

“Oh, come off it!”

His roommate answered, “Want me to help you pack?”

“There isn’t anything to pack.”

“How about all that stuff?”

“That’s yours, if you want it. Pick it over, then call in the others and let them take what they like.”

“Huh? Gee, Don, I don’t want your stuff. I’ll pack it and ship it after you.”

“Ever ship anything ’tween planets? It’s not worth it.”

“Then sell it. Tell you what, we’ll hold an auction right after supper.”

Don shook his head. “No time. I’m leaving at one o’clock.”

“What? You’re really blitzing me, kid. I don’t like this.”

“Can’t be helped.” He turned back to his sorting.

Several of his friends drifted in to say goodbye. Don himself had not spread the news and he did not suppose that the headmaster would have talked, yet somehow the grapevine had spread the word. He invited them to help themselves to the plunder, subject to Jack’s prior claim.

Presently he noticed that none of them asked why he was leaving. It bothered him more than if they had talked about it. He wanted to tell someone, anyone, that it was ridiculous to doubt his loyalty—and anyhow there wasn’t going to be a war.

Rupe Salter, a boy from another wing, stuck his head in, looked over the preparations. “Running out, eh? I heard you were and thought I’d check up.”

“I’m leaving, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I said. See here, ‘Don Jaime,’ how about that circus saddle of yours? I’ll take it off your hands if the price is right.”

“It’s not for sale.”

“Huh? No horses where you’re going. Make me a price.”

“It belongs to Jack here.”

“And it’s still not for sale,” Moreau answered promptly.

“Like that, eh? Suit yourself.” Salter went on blandly, “Another thing—you willed that nag of yours yet?”

The boys’ mounts, with few exceptions, were owned by the school, but it was a cherished and long-standing privilege of a boy graduating to “will” his temporary ownership to a boy of his choice. Don looked up sharply; until that moment he had not thought about Lazy. He realized with sudden grief that he could not take the little fat clown with him—nor had he made any arrangements for his welfare. “The matter is settled,” he answered, added to himself: as far as you are concerned.

“Who gets him? I could make it worth your while. He’s not much of a horse, but I want to get rid of the goat I’ve had to put up with.”

“It’s settled.”

“Be sensible. I can see the Head and get him anyhow. Willing a horse is a graduating privilege and you’re ducking out ahead of time.”

“Get out.”

Salter grinned. “Touchy, aren’t you? Just like all fog-eaters, too touchy to know what’s good for you. Well, you’re going to be taught a lesson some day soon.”

Don, already on edge, was too angry to trust himself to speak. “Fog-eater,” used to describe a man from cloud-wrapped Venus, was merely ragging, no worse than “Limey” or “Yank”—unless the tone of voice and context made it, as now, a deliberate insult. The others looked at him, half expecting action.

Jack got up hastily from the bed and went toward Salter. “Get going, Salty. We’re too busy to monkey around with you.” Salter looked at Don, then back at Jack, shrugged and said, “I’m too busy to hang around here…but not
too
busy, if you have anything in mind.”

The noon bell pealed from the mess hall; it broke the tension. Several boys started for the door; Salter moved out with them. Don hung back. Jack said, “Come on—beans!”

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“How about you taking over Lazy?”

“Gee, Don? I’d like to accommodate you—but what would I do with Lady Maude?”

“Uh, I guess so. What’ll I do?”

“Let me see—” Jack’s face brightened. “You know that kid Squinty Morris? The new kid from Manitoba? He hasn’t got a permanent yet; he’s been taking his rotation with the goats. He’d treat Lazy right; I know, I let him try Maudie once. He’s got gentle hands.”

Don looked relieved. “Will you fix it for me? And see Mr. Reeves?”

“Huh? You can see him at lunch; come on.”

“I’m not going to lunch. I’m not hungry. And I don’t much want to talk to the Head about it.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I don’t know. When he called me in this morning he didn’t seem exactly…friendly.”

“What did he say?”

“It wasn’t his words; it was his manner. Maybe I
am
touchy—but I sort of thought he was glad to see me go.”

Don expected Jack to object, convince him that he was wrong. Instead he was silent for a moment, then said quietly, “Don’t take it too hard, Don. The Head is probably edgy too. You know he’s got his orders?”

“Huh? What orders?”

“You knew he was a reserve officer, didn’t you? He put in for orders and got ’em, effective at end of term. Mrs. Reeves is taking over the school—for the duration.”

Don, already overstrained, felt his head whirling. For the duration? How could anyone say that when there wasn’t any such thing? “’Sfact,” Jack went on. “I got it straight from cookie.” He paused, then went on, “See here, old son—we’re pals, aren’t we?”

“Huh? Sure, sure!”

“Then give it to me straight: are you actually going to Mars? Or are you heading for Venus to sign up?”

“Whatever gave you that notion?”

“Skip it, then. Believe me; it wouldn’t make any difference between us. My old man says that when it’s time to be counted, the important thing is to be man enough to stand up.” He looked at Don’s face, then went on, “What you do about it is up to you. You know I’ve got a birthday coming up next month?”

“Huh? Yes, so you have.”

“Come then, I’m going to sign up for pilot training. That’s why I wanted to know what you planned to do.”

“Oh—”

“But it doesn’t make any difference—not between us. Anyhow, you’re going to Mars.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s right.”

“Good!” Jack glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to run—or they’ll throw my chow to the pigs. Sure you’re not coming?”

“Sure.”

“See you.” He dashed out.

Don stood for a moment, rearranging his ideas. Old Jack must be taking this seriously—giving up Yale for pilot training. But he was wrong—he
had
to be wrong.

Presently he went out to the corral.

Lazy answered his call, then started searching his pockets for sugar. “Sorry, old fellow,” he said sadly, “not even a carrot. I forgot.” He stood with his face to the horse’s cheek and scratched the beast’s ears. He talked to it in low tones, explaining as carefully as if Lazy could understand all the difficult words.

“So that’s how it is,” he concluded. “I’ve got to go away and they won’t let me take you with me.” He thought back to the day their association had begun. Lazy had been hardly more than a colt, but Don had been frightened of him. He seemed huge, dangerous, and probably carnivorous. He had never seen a horse before coming to Earth; Lazy was the first he had ever seen close up.

Suddenly he choked, could talk no further. He flung his arms around the horse’s neck and leaked tears.

Lazy nickered softly, knowing that something was wrong, and tried to nuzzle him. Don raised his head. “Goodbye, boy. Take care of yourself.” He turned abruptly and ran toward the dormitories.

DANIEL V
:25

T
HE 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 Fé 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 anti-nausea 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 Fé Trail
braked to a landing. The entire trip had taken less time than the copter jaunt from the school to Albuquerque—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 Fé 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 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.