Guardsmen of Tomorrow (17 page)

You were right, Cass
, his brother’s thought tickled his mind.
She’s beautiful
!

As always, Cass had done the archival research on Martian history out of curiosity about the coming visit-studying old news accounts preserved in one of their educational modules on how Earth governments had used the original colonies to get rid of criminals and malcontents, figuring isolation would work at a time when the death penalty was in decline; how Roderick (and Cass could find no further name or additional background on him) somehow managed to form the growing number of misfits into a militaristic society, but how it was hampered by a lack of raw materials like those Earth got from the belt. Even without many basic ores, the Martians had quickly achieved limited space travel, and the boys knew many who thought that a few renegade Marsmen lay behind the occasional piracies against Earth ships coming out this far. Of course, a pirate base in the form of a space habitat was possible, but none had ever been located. And only parts of missing ships were ever found, giving rise to the thought that the pirates had a use for the materials that went into building them.

According to what Egan told the boys, there had likewise been little left of the
Gemini
. He did not suggest that Mars ships were the cause of its destruction, but Cass had reviewed enough news archives over the years to be suspicious. And so, of course, was Pol. After all, as only Egan had figured out, they thought with one mind, not two. Even now. Cass was experiencing the double vision that he once assumed was normal for everyone, seeing Valda from his distant perch among the belters and also seeing her up close through Pol’s eyes.

Severing the physical link between the twins had not severed their mind-link. Who knew what kind of radiations might have affected their genetic formation before their births, either from the awesome energies of the pirate weapons or the environment of space itself? For whatever reason, Pol and Cass eventually realized that a sharing of senses was not normal for anyone else-a discovery‘ that they instinctively kept to themselves, until Egan guessed following the accident in which Pol was almost lost.

Cass found himself responding to the sight of Roderick’s sole heir, by a mother never publicly named. He imagined what it might be like to take her in his arms, to clasp her tightly, to touch her lips…

As was Pol. For the first time in his life, Cass actually resented sharing his brother’s thoughts, and felt the same unaccustomed wish for privacy emanating from his brother.

It took Pol a moment to realize that the man beside Valda was Roderick himself, and another moment to care. But neither brother could resist looking more closely at this man on whom the fate of worlds might depend-and certainly the future of the belters.

Egan had already told them what Roderick’s earlier emissaries were going to propose. If successful, it could change the way the belters lived forever.

Roderick had a receding hairline, a paunch, and a weak chin. But when he began to speak, both boys forgot all that. Later, when Cass transcribed the recording he had made and analyzed the actual words, he found them flowery but empty although they had certainly not seemed that way at the time. “Mars greets you, people of the asteroids,” Roderick began. “We salute this beginning of a friendship between your people and mine.”

Before he had finished talking, Roderick had convinced practically every listener in the chamber that Martian engineering was up to the task of creating an artificial planetoid out here in the belt, complete with gravity and atmosphere, where the belters could live between work shifts without suits, in habitations as open as those on Earth itself. Martian engineers would maintain this New Eden, as he called it, in return for a tiny fraction of the ores being furnished to Earth. A contingent of Marsmen would join the belters and learn the procedures to handle any extra work involved. And what the bureaucrats back on Earth didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

What did the belters have to lose? No ores would be launched to Mars orbit until New Eden had been created, and every worker in the belt had sampled it. “The orbiting factories around Earth aren’t that far removed from such a worldlet,”

Roderick concluded. “Earth could have done this for you. Mars will do it.”

Pol was surprised to hear spontaneous cheers from some of the entranced belters.

He might have joined in, but his own reaction was muted by Cass’ mental dissection of Roderick’s speech. It had been a masterpiece, building to a climax that was bound to provoke a positive reaction- especially from people who felt themselves taken for granted by Earth to start with.

But they were both surprised when Egan’s voice cut through the applause. ‘’And when the powers that be on Earth find out we’ve made such a decision independently?“ he asked. ”It won’t stay quiet forever, not with new workers replacing others going back to Earth to claim their rewards. And we’re completely dependent on Earth for life support.“

There was a stir among the Martian delegation, some even putting their hands on the hilts of their swords. “You need not be. Mars would be willing to supply your needs,” Roderick said, smiling.

“And we’d be under your control instead of theirs,” Egan replied, seemingly oblivious to the weapons. “Could that be what you’re intending with all this largess?”

Murmurs echoed in the chamber from the belters, some agreeing with Egan’s suggestion and others ridiculing it. Roderick raised his hands slightly and, such was his mas-tery of the situation, the murmurs died out. “Earth could not get along without the materials you supply,” he said. “They could not sever their relationship with the belt, whatever you did. But is it any of Earth’s business if we have a small contingent of scientists and engineers out here working on an artificial planetoid, which you and your successors can choose to utilize or not?”

Not unless those scientists and engineers are not those things at all, but an
advance force for a military expedition into the belt
, Cass thought. And then he heard his thoughts echoed aloud. Pol, he realized, had spoken them.

What had been a stir before became an uproar, with several Marsmen moving their hands to their sidearms, including a giant of a man who stood beside Valda. Several pushed the studs in the handles to activate the weapons. Cass had read about the hummers, developed on Mars when there had been threats of open warfare among the underground cities, before Roderick managed to unify them against a hostile environment instead of one another. But it would take a few seconds for them to be ready for use. Cass started to call out to the other belters, to disarm the delegation before those fearsome weapons could be brought into use.

Roderick reacted more quickly, ending the crisis with a gesture. He waved his hand, and the Marsmen instantly snapped off their weapons. The humming sound stopped.

And then Roderick’s daughter spoke. “We came out of friendship,” she said in a rich, clear voice. “If we wanted to take the belt militarily, we would have come in force. With all due respect, I don’t believe you could have stopped us.”

“Don’t you?” Pol said with a reckless grin, directing his reply at her. “We’re in our element out here. We don’t need suction cups or whatever on our boots to get around. And while you occupied one rock, we could be booby-trapping a dozen more.”

Pol had become the focus of the entire Martian delegation, including Valda, which Cass knew was exactly what he’d had in mind. Cass found himself jealous of his brother getting the Martian girl’s attention, yet another unaccustomed emotion for him, and there was no way he could hide it from Pol. He could not understand it.

Never before had there been the slightest fracture in their thoughts.

“What’s your name, boy?” asked Roderick, an amused smile on his face.

“Gemini,” Pol responded. Again, Cass found himself irritated that his brother had usurped a name they had in common-especially when be saw that Valda was regarding Pol with what looked like genuine interest.

“Well, young Gemini, and you really believe you could stand up to one of my Marsmen in some type of combat?”

“Yes, sir. Not on Mars, but out here, certainly.” Cass felt Pol’s relief that his voice remained firm and did not crack embarrassingly.

“And would you care to demonstrate? In a contest with one of my men?”

“Well…”

“Excellent! It’s good to see there are young men with sporting blood out here. Your people and mine will get along well, young Gemini.” Roderick waved an arm around at the Marsmen around him. “And who in my little group would you like to try to best in a physical encounter?”

Pol nodded at the giant Marsman who stood next to Valda. “Why not him?”

“Now wait a minute…” Egan began.

Several other belters shouted him down. “Pol can take care of himself, Egan,” Cass heard Nieminski say. In fact, Cass was not worried about that part either. He and Pol might be young compared to the other belters, but nobody could top their experience at handling themselves in this environment.

The Marsman glared down at Pol, his nose wrinkling in obvious distaste. “Very well, Bardo,” Roderick said to him. “The boy may need a lesson, but try not to damage him badly.”

“This is crazy!” Egan declared.

But Marsmen and belters had already cleared a space around Pol and Bardo. Bardo shook his head slowly, as though in disgust, and then made a feinting movement toward Pol. He looked chagrined when Pol failed to react with any defensive gesture at all. Then he reached out to grab his younger antagonist in all seriousness.

His fingers met empty air. Pol had leaped lightly from the rock floor and flipped over Bardo’s head, just out of reach. He grabbed the arm of a belter in the audience, and used that leverage for enough impetus to land behind Bardo. Chuckles from the belters echoed within the chambers. The maneuver had been no real surprise to people used to living in relative free fall.

Bardo had spun almost in time to catch Pol coming down-but not quite. Pol landed with his back to the larger man and, without seeming to glance behind him, curled himself into a backward somersault that took him right between the giant’s barrel-like legs.

Now, that maneuver was a surprise-to everyone but Cass, who knew Pol had seen his opponent’s position through his brother’s more-distant eyes.

Instinctively, Bardo, bent over to see where his adversary had rolled. Pol had spread his hands on either side to brace himself against the rock floor. He planted one foot against the Marsman’s rump and pushed gently, sending the larger man pinwheeling into the air. He spilled, head over heels, into the ranks of those closest to the platform, as laughter rained down from the belters.

“Enough, Bardo, that will do,” Roderick said as the Mars-man scrambled into a crouch, a furious expression on his face. “I believe I see what the young man means.

You really are in your element out here, aren’t you?”

Cass could not help sharing Pol’s feeling of triumph, not only at deflating some of the pomposity of the visitors but also at a minuscule payback for what both boys suspected other Marsmen had done to the ship on which they were born. Pol could not help glancing at Valda to see her reaction, but she was not looking at him. She was regarding Bardo with what seemed an infinite sadness on her face.

Far from scuttling Roderick’s proposal, the friendly-seeming little contest seemed to cement it. Work would start as soon as the Martians could assemble the engineering equipment and bring it out. The Martian delegation left soon after, their squat little ship gradually moving clear of the habitat asteroid and disappearing into the blackness. Fifteen minutes later, Cass and Pol saw the silent flare of its rocket as it began its return trip.

The body would never have been found without the broadcast locator. Its beeps had been picked up by a team of belters working on a rock within sight of Roderick’s departure trajectory. Pol and Cass got their first sight of it along with a couple dozen others when it was brought through the shelter air lock.

It was, or had been, a man. It was hardly recognizable as one, since it wore no pressure suit and many of its internal organs had ruptured in hard vacuum. But there was no mistaking that giant physique.

Cass felt his stomach turning but managed to hold it down. Pol didn’t, causing a general rush for hand-vacs to suck up the contents of his last meal. Egan’s only reaction was a grim tightening of his lips.

“I guess Roderick wanted us to know how he feels about failure,” Egan said.

The project took nearly three Earth-years, as time was measured in the belt, but less than half of that by Martian time, as the Martian engineers and workers constantly observed. And this was Day One on New Eden, as Roderick had called it, fashioned mostly from materials in the belt itself. The Martians had proved to be as proficient at building a space habitat as Roderick had boasted.

In deference to the belters, the periods of light and dark were based on Earth-days on New Eden-or, rather, in the spherical habitat. Its globe was nearly three miles in diameter, with a spin that simulated Earth-like gravity along its inner equator. Its

“sky” was at its center, complete with real clouds. Cass kept staring at them. He had seen reproductions on tape and in still pictures, of course, but never the real thing.

Day One also marked the first holiday in the belt since the start of mining operations.

Even Roderick’s visit three years ago had not prompted a total shutdown of work shifts. But this time, the belters had lifted a phrase from Roderick’s speech: What Earth didn’t know wouldn’t hurt it.

Between five and six hundred belters-everyone in the belt, in fact, but one-had gathered on New Eden to bid farewell to the Martian workers and to spend an Earth-day walking on seemingly solid ground, lifting their unhelmeted faces to the sky, breathing in the air that was all around them.

Cass wondered what all the celebrating was about.

He felt naked, exposed, here in the open without even a pressure suit. He recognized how real the synthetic grass and trees looked, from the pictures held seen of Earth, but even they felt unnatural to him. The excited voices around him and Egan seemed strange, unfiltered as they were by helmet receivers. And the constant pull of gravity generated by the worldlet’s spin seemed to him more uncomfortable than his and Pol’s workouts in the centrifuge. Of course, he and Pol were the only belters who had never experienced continuous gravity before.