Space For Hire (Seven For Space) (14 page)

I waited, puzzled but alert. A black synthetic appeared, carrying an armload of guns. He dumped them at my feet and left the field.

I checked the booty. Kane had been generous. Here was a .40-903 Noggle-Henry cutbeam screwjoint slicer, a .120-10 boxbleed Heebish-Hoskins boregun and a .43-17 Kamish-Bibler doublestock jetflare — which was a mean piece of equipment.

All in all, quite a lot of firepower. Was Kane going to give me a real chance to shoot my way out? With weapons such as these I could handle anything.

Kane's voice cracked over the field: "Pick up the first weapon of your choice, Mr. Space, and stand ready. You are about to be attacked."

At least he warned me. I snatched up the Noggle-Henry cutbeam, expecting one of Kane's fantastic creations to appear. Maybe a giant synthogator, or a massive nearelephant. But, once again, Kane surprised me.

The field on which I stood was encircled by a 20-foot wall of featureless rock. A sudden opening in the base of the rock disgorged a dozen Kane synthetics, all carrying normal hand weapons. They crossed the field, bearing down on me.

"Here they come, Mr. Space," boomed Kane. "Better start shooting."

I did. And it was absurdly easy to cut them down with the Noggle-Henry.

A second wave followed, and I dispatched them just as easily, using the Heebish-Hoskins.

"Your aim is excellent, Mr. Space," Kane told me. "The weapons are self-charging and will remain operative. You should be able to deal with any number of my clumsy, poorly-armed synthetics."

He was right. I could go on knocking over his synthos indefinitely. So what was Kane's game?

The lopsided battle continued — with me slicing up Kane's robot army, wave after wave. A few synthos managed to fire their handguns at me but the range was too far and I wasn't touched. My hardware had the edge on range.

I still couldn't dope Kane's action.

Then I noticed something; I was slowing down. My aim was not as accurate, even with the boxbleed Heebish-Hoskins. I was tiring fast. But why? This was easy target work, nothing more.

My hands had turned brown. Liver spots had begun to cover them. My eyesight was way off and my legs were shaky.

I was now missing as often as I scored.

"Better try the jetflare, Mr. Space," Kane suggested, and I could hear him chuckle.

I picked up the .43-17 Kamish-Bibler and did a little better with it, knocking down a whole row of charging synthos with a single jet charge. But by the next wave my hands were trembling. The Kamish-Bibler was too heavy. I could no longer hold it. The weapon slipped from my twitching fingers.

This wasn't exhaustion; it was something far worse. I looked at the hairs along my wrists. White. My skin was dry and puckered, my cheeks sucked in, my eyes watery and filmed.

I touched my face, ran my fingers over my lips, nose, forehead. My face was withered and dust-dry. Now I knew the real enemy Kane was using against me. And how could I fight it; how could I fight old age?

"Be quick, Mr. Space," Kane's voice warned. "More of my synthetics are moving toward you. Soon they'll be within handweapon range. Better get busy, old timer!"

I coughed, a racking bone-shaking cough, and dropped to my knobby knees, scrabbling feebly for the jetflare. I clutched it, raised it to fire, tried to focus on the advancing line of black synthos. Waves of hot dizziness swept across my brain. The field danced and shimmered crazily in front of me.

I turned my wrinkled face toward the dark viewwall, behind which I knew Kane was laughing at me. I shook a withered fist at him as the synthetics moved in.

Trembling, I swung to face their charge.

But they'd stopped. All of them. I peered at dozens of frozen black-marble robots on the wide field. Kane had deactivated his troops.

And I knew why.

He didn't need them any longer. I was growing older by the moment. I could feel my skin loosen and shrivel; my bones ached; my fingernails cracked and blackened.

Kane was watching an old man die.

"You'll be gone very soon now, Mr. Space," Kane's confident voice informed me over the field speaker. "Already you are past eighty and aging at the rate of a year a minute. In ten more Earth minutes you'll be over ninety. Your laboring heart will cease beating within its wrinkled sack of bones and desiccated flesh. Your breath will rattle into silence. A final twitch or two — and that will be the end of private operative Samuel T. Space."

He kept gabbing at me as I sat on the field of battle, gasping, shaking, growing weaker by the second.

"In case you are speculating on the possibility of this situation being part of a hypnotrance let me assure you that this is all quite real. You are, in actuality, a wheezing old codger."

The weapons at my feet were useless now. My clothing hung slack on my bony scarecrow's frame; my muscles were loose and flabby, my cheekbones sunken, my lips puckered and seamed. And breathing was a labor, a supreme task that drained my sagging body of its last energy. Kane was right: I wouldn't last for more than another ten minutes or so.

It was a hell of a way for a tough private op to cash in his chips. If Kane stood right in front of me and my .38 was in my hand I couldn't pull the trigger.

I figured I'd just passed a hundred when Nicole popped into three-dimensional reality at my left elbow.

"Hang on, Sam," she yelped, jamming a metal hat on my white-haired freckled old skull. "We'll be out of this in a jiffy!"

"Shoot them! Fire! Fire!" Kane was yelling — and I saw that he'd reactivated his army of synthos.

They were raising their guns for the kill when Nicole and I popped into another dimension.

* * *

We were back in my office on Mars. Nicole was sitting in my client's chair and I was behind my desk. Everything looked normal, except for our metal hats.

"By crackey!" I wheezed, slapping my shriveled old thigh. "That was a mighty fancy rescue. How'd you manage it?"

"Simple," said Nicole. "I vamped a key to the storage unit out of one of Kane's men and borrowed two portahat transporters. The same type, basically, that those goons used on you back in Allnew York."

"But how come we're still wearing them?" I croaked, fingering my warm metal hat. "Aren't they supposed to snap back into their own universe?"

"Not
these
kind," she replied. "They're equipped for multiple entry, universe to universe. The model they used on you was the pop-back one, designed to leave a person stranded in another world. That was the Portahop J-9zzzz. I made sure I got the J-9xxxx ones — the non-hoppers."

"Hah! Awk! Foof!" I coughed and hacked and sneezed, as incredibly old men are inclined to do.

"You should learn to swallow your sneezes," Nicole told me. "I practiced until I could. I'm an expert on the Theory of Sneezes."

"Humbug!" I rasped, wiping my lumpy nose. "Where the deuce are we? And why save me after kidnapping me?"

"We're in the closest universe I could dial," she said. "And I saved you because I'm in love with you."

"But look at the differences in our ages," I said. "You're twenty-something and I'm over a hundred. These May-December things never work out."

She giggled. "You've still got your sense of humor, Sam. And that's good to know. Proves you're not yet senile."

"I'm damn close to being," I said grumpily. "But you still haven't explained why you kidnapped me."

"I was under Kane's power," she said, wrinkling her freckled nose."He used his hypno ring on me to induce a trance. Then he instructed me to go to Mars and bring you to him. I just wasn't myself, Sam."

I gave her an old man's snarl. "You're always trapping me and then saving me."

"That's true," she sighed. "I seem to continually fall into evil clutches. Then I'm corrupted, blackmailed, tortured and hypnotized. It's very discouraging. Guess I'm what they call a natural victim. But right now I love you and that's what matters. Love is cleansing and all-powerful."

She kissed my sunken left cheek. "Ouch. Your white spiny old whiskers scratch."

I spread my liver-spotted hands on the desk. "How in dang-tootin' am I gonna regain my lost years? People just won't hire hundred-year-old private eyes. Tarnation! I can barely totter."

"Don't worry," Nicole said softly, patting my bald dome, "something or someone will turn up."

Someone did. Me. Not I. Me. The one who owned this office in this universe. He walked in and there I was.

"Hello, Nicole," Sam said. "Who's the old gink, and why is he propped behind my desk wearing that silly metal hat?"

"I'm not
your
Nicole," she said. "I'm not, in other words, the Nicole you know in your world. I'm an
extra
Nicole from another dimension — and these hats are portable transporters. The man — or rather the old gink — behind your desk, Mr. Space, is actually another you."

"Nuts. I don't look like that," said Sam.

"Of course not. But if you were subjected to an advanced aging process, as he was, by the Robot King you would indeed look exactly that way."

"You mean Kane turned him into this old geezer?"

"
Our
Kane did, not yours. Yours might try it on you or he might not. But that really doesn't concern any of us at the present moment.

That's not why we're here."

"Then why
are
you here?"

"To hire you," said Nicole.

I creaked and sputtered in my chair. "Dad drat it, you didn't tell me you were hiring me!"

She smiled. "We need a you in younger form. A stronger you. And now we have him."

Sam walked over to me and peered across the desk at my wizened features. "By God, I think this wrinkled old bag of sticks really is me!"

I coughed in his face.

Sam jumped away. "Take it easy, Pops!"

"Then just quit
peering
at me," I said testily.

"Okay, what's the story?" Sam growled. "I need to know where the dice are."

She took a roll of credits from her purse and handed them to him."We are hiring you to put on a portahat and return to our universe. You'll pop up inside Kane's house on Uranus. I can set the hat for that."

"So what do I do when I get there?"

"You simply creep out of the storage unit to his special killquarters and steal his age machine. He keeps all that sort of junk in his kill-quarters. Anything he uses to kill people will be in there."

"How will I know my way around the joint?"

"I'll give you a floor plan. The rest will be up to you. Actually, your job should be fairly easy. I've seen the machine and it's not too heavy. You shouldn't have any difficulty bringing it back here to us."

She took off her portahat and showed Sam how to work the dial. Then she gave him a floor plan of Kane's place, shook his hand, and he put on the hat.

"Are you comfortable?"

"Just say when."

"When," said Nicole.

Zap! He was gone.

"We did it!" declared Nicole. She turned to me with a radiant, impossibly-sweet smile. "Bet he'll be back in no time at all. Now, aren't you glad we hired you?"

I didn't reply. In fact, I barely heard her. My ancient old frame was all tuckered out. My eyes slid closed. I sighed, snuffled — and drifted into sleep.

"Wake up, Pops!"

It was Sam. He was shaking me.

"Dad drat it!" I pulled myself up, hacking and coughing. I blinked at Sam, my eyes watering.

"Hard to believe this ole jelly bag is really me," he said to Nicole.

"He's you," she nodded. "If you ever manage to live past a hundred in this world you'll look exactly like he does now."

"Then I hope some gungoon puts me on ice first," Sam declared. "Phew!"

I vigorously blew my nose, wiped my rhummy eyes, and asked, "Well — did you get it?"

"You mean did I get the age machine?" Sam looked smug. "Yeah, I got it."

"He was very brave," said Nicole.

"I also got me a shiner," said Sam, probing at his left eye with exploring fingers. The area was purple and puffy. "But I sure messed up them tin guys of Kane's. One of the guards spotted me with the machine just outside Kane's killquarters and seven of 'em jumped me. Gave me a real workout. We rolled around the floor and I thought I was a goner until I got my .38 working. I scattered their tin guts with the ole.38 and that wound up the party."

"He talks even tougher than I do," I said.

"You can see now why we had to send your younger self to steal the machine," Nicole said to me. "At your advanced age you might have suffered a stroke fighting seven big synthetics. All Sam got was a black eye."

"Where's the damn machine?" I wanted to know. "I'm sick of being an old geezer."

"We put it behind your desk near your chair," Nicole said.

"Near
my
chair," snapped Sam.

I tottered from the couch to the desk, with Nicole holding both my elbows to keep me from toppling. I was dizzy after my nap and only half-awake. "What if I die of an attack of gout before we get this thing working?"

"Nonsense," said Nicole. "Gout doesn't strike people down like lightning."

"Old guys always worry," declared Sam. "They're all kinda batty on the subject of health."

"You would be too at over a hundred," I growled. "So shut your ugly yap!"

Sam grinned. "The old timer's still got some fire in his furnace."

"Here we are," said Nicole, guiding me into the chair. I slumped down wearily.

The age machine was round and black and shiny, about the size of a spinkas ball. It had a dial in the front, and a sweepbeam jutted out of the top.

"Hope this dang thing doesn't bring on a toxic condition," I mumbled. "If I get too nervous warts could pop out all over me. I heard what happened once to a nervous oldster."

"Quit fretting and let me adjust the sweep area," said Nicole. "What age do you want to be, Sam?"

"Dunno. Hell, I could be twenty again, couldn't I?" I clapped my withered palms together.

Nicole shook her head. "I wouldn't advise making yourself any younger than you were when the machine aged you. That kind of tinkering could produce negative results."