Island Worlds (9 page)

The man ran a hand over his slick-shaven scalp. Zero-gee people usually favored little or no hair. "Name of the company kind of says it all, don't it? Rockbusters. That's what we do, we bust rock. We're a hardrock mining outfit. Highgrading, mostly. No smelting or refining, we leave that to others. Company operates out of Avalon. We have sixteen ships now and we're buying four more. Twenty per ship's crew and we work on shares. Pay depends on how much ore you bring back and how high-grade it is."

"What kind of ore do you look for?"

"U-235, mostly. We've found and exploited some of the best rocks in the last ten years. You had any military experience?"

"No. Why, is that desirable?"

The bald man looked at him as if he were simple-minded. "I said we were high-graders, didn't I? No bulk cargoes for Rockbusters. Everybody knows it, too. We get claimjumper raids all the time. There's plenty of boosters and hijackers out there. That's one reason we work on shares. All of us have a stake in defending the cargo. Get a few successful voyages under your belt, you might have enough socked away to buy into a ship of your own. It's hard work and it's dangerous, but it pays. You interested?"

"Maybe. Let me check around. By the way, do you know of a man named Martin Shaw?"

The man stared at him, utterly without expression. "Never heard of him."

Two more hiring offices turned out to be another mining outfit and a freighting company, neither of them as hard-bitten as Rockbusters, Inc., but both looking for people more robust than the standard, First World Earthie. None of them had ever heard of Martin Shaw, either. Pointedly.

The next office came as a surprise. Lettered on the door was, simply: "Sálamis." The man behind the desk rose to shake his hand. He was tall and spare and he wore a silver-gray coverall with high, black boots and shoulderboards striped red and gold. Oddest of all, he wore a holstered pistol at his belt. "Good day, young man. I'm Captain Moore, the enlistment officer."

"Enlistment officer?" Thor said. "I'm Thor Taggart."

The tangled gray eyebrows raised fractionally. "Taggart. I might have known. Those genes stand out. Was General Taggart your grandfather?"

"Yes. I never knew him, though."

"I saw him a few times when I was an enlisted man. I served under two of your uncles and one of your aunts as well. Are you considering carrying on the family tradition and taking up the military profession?"

"To tell you the truth," Thor said, "I just got to Luna a few hours ago. I've been looking into the possibilities of extra-terrestrial employment and happened to notice your office. Just what is Sálamis?"

"Sálamis is an asteroid, approximately twenty kilometers by five kilometers by two, which has become a military establishment. A man your age could do worse than enroll in our academy. After a four-year course you would enter the outerworld armed forces as a commissioned officer."

"Actually, I've spent all the years I want to in universities. Ah, I was wondering, just what do you do? Last I heard, there was no employment for a military force out there. The Space Force and Marines, such as they are, seem to have a monopoly."

"That will change, in time," Moore said, calmly. "Someday, there will be a call for an organized military arm among the space settlements. Until that time, we keep the military tradition alive."

"But, how is all this financed? Are you mercenaries?"

Moore regarded him frostily. "If you mean are we hired guns for anyone with a private war to fight, the answer is decidedly 'No.' We take an occasional security mission, just to keep in practice, but we would never undertake aggressive operations. We have an endowment and find our funding to be adequate." He smiled ruefully. "You'll have noticed that I'm pretty old for a company-grade officer. When I retired from the Spacer Marines, I was a lieutenant colonel. As always, promotion is slow in peacetime. That, too, is a situation I expect to change before long. Until then, there are always a few who prefer the military life."

"If you don't mind my asking, why did you resign a field-grade commission to start at the bottom out here?"

"Actually, I do mind. But I'll make an exception since you're a relative of some of my favorite C.O.'s. I spent my career watching a proud service become a petty police force putting down brushfire insurgencies on Earth and harassing honest settlers out here. Pretty soon, we were going to be down to rounding up political dissidents and guarding them in detention camps. I didn't want to stick around to see that, so I resigned and emigrated. I'd rather spend a career toting a rifle as a private than see my profession prostituted. So that's my story. Now I'll give you some advice. On Sálamis, we go by the old Foreign Legion rules: Never ask a man about his past."

"I'll remember that. And I appreciate your candor. By the way, do they really let you carry a sidearm around here?"

Moore smiled and sat back in his chair. "Only after they've confiscated the power pack. But it's part of an officer's uniform so I wear it anyway. Keep us in mind, Mr. Taggart. You may decide that a military career is what you need after all."

"I'll think about it." As he reached the door, Thor turned back. "By the way, have you ever heard of—oh, forget it."

"You mean Martin Shaw?" Moore asked.

"Yes," Thor said, surprised.

"I never heard of him either," said Moore, solemnly.

By the time Thor had located a clothier's and purchased a pair of soft boots, it was near the end of shift. He decided to give the Earthlight Room a try. The lobby of the Hilton was empty and the same impossibly thin Chinese girl was behind the desk.

"Any messages for me, Miss Fu?" he asked.

She looked up blankly, then smiled. "'Oh, you must be Mr. Taggart."

"Don't you remember?"

"I'm not Ambrosia. I'm her sister. We're twins," she added, unnecessarily.

"Don't tell me, let me guess. Would your name be Nectar?"

"You win no prize for that. No, no messages. Is your room satisfactory?"

"Fine. But there was a rat in it, and Athos was too slow to catch it."

She rolled her eyes upward theatrically. "They're everyplace. And they get smarter every year. There's some kind of weird accelerated evolution going on here. They know all about doors and traps and poisons. I think they'll take over some day."

"Well, should anybody be looking for me while the rats are plotting, I'll be in the Earthlight Room for the next two or three hours." He stepped into the elevator and keyed it for the top level. Above the residential levels, the elevator tube emerged from the step-back of the hotel and for a minute he had a breathtaking view of the entire atrium. Then the tube disappeared into an overhead structure of spidery struts and buttresses. As he passed through the supports, he caught a glimpse of furry, white forms darting among them. Then the elevator was inside the overhead structure, rising through several meters of solid moon rock before entering the bar-restaurant complex. He had gone over the charts provided by his room screen, and he knew that the Earthlight Room was actually part of the spaceport complex, and there were other entrances besides the Hilton tube. On reflection, it only made sense. Modern though it looked, the Earthlight Room was built in one of the oldest structures on the Moon, and a man as shady as Martin Shaw would never frequent a hangout without plenty of bolt-holes.

The elevator let him out on a broad terrace from which steps led down in two directions. To his left was the restaurant, to his right the bar. At his back was a wall of lunar rock, part of a natural cliff. He decided to try the bar first. The view from the top of the steps was fabulous, and he paused for a moment to admire it.

The bar was on a slight rise of ground with a cliff at its back, overlooking the landing pads. Beyond the pads stretched miles of lunar plain, ending abruptly in another towering cliff. Above the far cliff was the impossibly blue sphere of Earth, wreathed in bands of white cloud. He could just make out the eastern coast of Asia, the Malay archipelago and the bulk of Australia. Most of what was visible was blue Pacific.

The bartender was young, with Mediterranean features and curly, black hair. He was polishing a vacuum-blown glass, about two molecules thick and nearly unbreakable. It was made of the same material as the vast window that slanted overhead from the face of the cliff to the lunar surface.

Thor seated himself on one of the spindly stools at the bar. "Are you Miklos?" he asked.

The bartender nodded. "What can I serve you?"

"Ambrosia Fu says your Welcome To Luna Special is good for an upset stomach."

"Just arrived, eh? I'll fix you right up." The bartender turned his back to preserve the mysteries of his craft as he arched liquids for spectacular distances into the goblet he had been polishing. He presented the completed product with a flourish. Thor sampled it and found that it did, indeed, have a settling effect on his stomach.

"That's just what I needed," Thor said. "By the way, I've heard that a certain Martin Shaw frequents this place. I need to meet with him."

"I've never head of any such person," Miklos said, in a low voice. "However, when he doesn't come in, the place where he won't be sitting is that table over there near the base of the window, under the rubber plant." He nodded toward the plant in question.

"When won't he be coming in?" Thor asked in an equally conspiratorial tone.

"He shouldn't be arriving in about an hour and a half," Miklos assured him.

"Good. That gives me plenty of time for dinner. What do you recommend?"

"Since it's your first day, stick with something light. The tempura plate is great. Our tanks raise shrimp better than anything on Earth." He nodded toward the blue ball in the distance.

"I'll be back," Thor said.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, he sat at the table beneath the rubber plant. The tempura had been as advertised and he was beginning to feel acclimatized. That was good, because he had a feeling that he was going to need to be in top form to deal with the mysterious Mr. Shaw.

Idly, he studied the rubber plant. It was a gene-manipulated species which looked identical to the common Earth ornamental plant, but had been engineered to double its oxygen output. Everywhere one looked in the lunar settlements, there were plants springing from pots and planters. They softened the sterile environment, recycled the atmosphere and gradually built up the supply of arable soil.

"Excuse me, sir." Thor looked up and saw a young woman who facially resembled Nectar and Ambrosia. Apparently yet another of the innumerable Fus. "I'm afraid this table is reserved at this hour. If you don't mind, I'll find you another place and bring you a drink on the house."

"I have an appointment with the gentleman in question," he lied.

"Oh, that's different," she said, doubtfully. "Please excuse me." Thor smiled and admired her as she walked gracefully away. This was getting to be better than an old holothriller. But this place was the last where he would have expected to find a classical man of mystery like Shaw.

The Earthlight Room was full at this hour, and most of the patrons were business people, pilots and other officers from the nearby port, and a large gaggle of tourists, instantly recognizable by their clothing and awkward gait. In short, the place was almost absurdly respectable. Even the stripper pirouetting on the little stage didn't detract from the middle-class atmosphere. The old art form was enjoying a revival on the Moon, and dancers from Earth were coming up to practice it, taking advantage of the kinder effect of lunar gravity on Earth dancers past their prime. Thor judged the lovely, dark-haired woman on the stage to be in her mid-forties, but nothing sagged in one-sixth gee. As he could very plainly see, she showed no signs of surgery.

"You're Taggart."

Thor whirled in his chair. Where had the man come from? Just his luck to be staring at a naked woman at the crucial first moment of his meeting with Shaw. To cover his confusion, he gave Shaw what he hoped was an arrogantly evaluating once-over.

Shaw was a man of medium height and sturdy build, dressed in a spacer's coverall absolutely devoid of insignia or ornament. His face was broad, with a dark beard framing his jaw. His cheekbones were wide and his green eyes had the slightest hint of epicanthic fold in their inner corners. His most prominent feature was his broad, bulging forehead, further emphasized by a high hairline. In classical Greek sculpture, such a brow had been the trademark of the higher gods, and it lent tremendous force to his countenance. The head was a bit large for his body, making Shaw appear shorter than he was. Martin Shaw looked like a formidable man.

"That's who I am," Thor said. "Please have a seat. We have business to discuss."

"I think I will, since this is my table. Whether we have business to discuss is another matter. What line of work do you think I'm in, Mr. Taggart?" The waitress brought Shaw a drink and left discreetly.

"It's difficult to say, since nobody's ever heard of you. Chih' Chin Fu told me you might be able to help me. I need to disappear."

"Did he tell you I was a magician?"

"Of sorts. Just hear me out, then tell me if you're interested." Briefly, Thor gave him the story of his doings since the McNaughton party. He omitted most of his financial arrangements, figuring Shaw had no real reason to know those. "Will you help me?" he asked when he was finished.

"I can. The price is two million gold."

Thor nodded. That was about ten times the pre-crisis price for a passage to a typical asteroid world, but he would have been suspicious had Shaw asked much less. Thor was running a fairly high risk of imprisonment, although he had family connections to call on in a worst-case scenario. Shaw was running a far higher risk, and consequently played for higher stakes. An easy, low fee probably would have meant a quick, unceremonious exit from an airlock somewhere outside lunar orbit. "No problem with that. Half now, half on arrival at Avalon."

"Avalon," Shaw said. "So you want to head straight for the action?"

"Being stuck on some remote rock would be a poor start for a new life."