Look Out For Space (Seven For Space) (12 page)

"Ah, but I
have
checked your records, Mr. Space," the wall cut in smoothly. "I automatically check the records of every prisoner under my jurisdiction."

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Well, can't you
see
I'm no ax murderer?"

"That is correct," said the wall. "You are
not
an ax murderer." A pause, then the wall continued in its oily, calming voice. "But you
are
a forger, kidnapper, rapist and mulch molester."

"What's a mulch?"

"A very friendly, jolly little creature living in the Albright Cluster. Never a harsh word for anyone or anything. Almost always smiling. Humming little tunes. A joy to converse with on any subject. Beloved by all."

"I've never been to the Albright Cluster!"

A clicking. A whirring. Tiny lights went on and off.

Then the wall said, its tone flat and matter-of-fact: "You molested a mulch in the lower Albright Cluster on the 6th of March, 2053. And again, with a second mulch, on the 10th of June, 2054. It is all here in your faxfile, Mr. Space."

"Then the file lies!" I yelled, jumping from the bodchair. "I'm no forger, kidnapper, or mulch molester! Wrenhurst is behind this. He must have bribed a fax official to have my faxfile falsified!"

There was an awkward silence.

"By jumping up and yelling at me, you exhibit prime psychotic behavior, Mr. Space," said the wall in a self-satisfied tone. "Naturally, most psychotics assume that their records have been tampered with by nefarious personages. All very much in line with your criminal profile."

I slumped back into the bodchair.

The wall clicked and whirred again. "I'll have a mild tranquilizer administered with your moldy bread crusts. The dosage will not interfere with your duties as scooper. Two milligrains should do the trick."

"I don't need a tranquilizer!"

"It should ease your nerves," the wall said. "Goodbye."

And it went blank.

All of its tiny lights were out; its tapes had stopped whirring. It was dark and silent.

I felt the guard's heavy hand on my shoulder. "All right, Space. You've had your little visit with the doc. Now, back to work!"

I was numb and defeated.

I'd accomplished nothing.

I was no closer to getting out of Hell than the day I arrived.

The wall remained dark and silent as the guard led me away.

Working the juice …

Bending, scooping, sweating.

Heat so bad, you didn't want to breathe. Every lungful of air a punishment. Exhaustion racking you. The triple suns scalding the sky. The guards prodding you, never letting you ease off.

Working the juice.

* * *

By the end of the fifteenth sunperiod I'd made a decision.

"I've been talking to people," I told Cutter. "Finding out things."

"Ay? An' what have ya learned?" He was stretched belly down on his cot, his big hair-matted body drained of strength. Each night we were both a little weaker, a little thinner, closer to collapse.

"That the life of a scooper seldom exceeds a hundred sunperiods … that you die scooping juice … that the guards strip your corpse and leave you to sizzle under the suns."

"Yer tellin' me nothin' new, mate," growled Cutter. "In Hell, ya fry. That's our lot, an' nothin' to be done about it."

"I'm going to do something about it," I said.

"An' just what would
that
be?"

"I'm going to Volunteer," I said.

Cutter abruptly rolled over, sitting up on the cot. His face was the color of ashes. "No, mate! Don't even
say
it. Don't even use that bloody word!"

"I mean it," I told him. "Look, Cutter, it's the only way out of here, short of death."

"It's worse than death! It's a
living
death, that's what it is!"

"I hear some have survived okay."

"Survival, you say? As what? I'll tell ya what, lad! Abominations! That's what they survived to be, them that survived at all." He shook his matted head. "I'll take me chances scoopin' juice. If I go, I go as
meself,
ole Cutter, an' not some … twisted thing!"

"I was hoping you'd Volunteer along with me," I said.

"Never!" spat Cutter. "An' yer ten kinds of fool fer doin' it yerself!" His dark sunken eyes regarded me sadly. "Mark me, it's a terrible course you're undertakin — and if I was a religious man, I'd pray for ya. But, bein' an ax killer an' all, there's nothin' I can give ya but me pity."

I clapped him on one of his still-meaty shoulders. "Thanks, Cutter. I appreciate your concern."

There was nothing more to say, so we didn't say it.

The next morning, I Volunteered.

* * *

Naturally, I was accepted for the Program.

Volunteers were never turned down.

They shipped me out that same day on one of the big juice tubs. Not back to Earth, but at least out of the Gulfs.

I was dropped off at a planet called Jeremiah. It bore the name of the Program's founder, Jeremiah Elijah Curd. Mars-born, Earth-reared, with over a dozen medical degrees earned on six planets to his credit. After half a century of surgical practice in a multitude of galaxies, Curd had become a legend, a one-man encyclopedia of medical knowledge.

The Program was his great dream. He approached it with the fervor of a man possessed, and his brilliant arguments finally persuaded the combined members of the Federated Space Government to lend their approval. They granted him the use of convicted felons as experiments within the Program, but
only
as Volunteers.

At first, Curd had his choice of hundreds, but as rumors of the "horrors" of the Program filtered back to the prison planets, the tide of Volunteers thinned to a trickle. Now only a scattered few were desperate enough to allow their bodies to be turned over to Jeremiah Curd. A willing Volunteer was rare and, as Curd put it, "thrice welcome."

That's what he said to me as I stepped off the ship. Curd was a cadaverously-thin ghost of a man, all angled bones and sagging tissues, but with an unholy fire in the depths of his eyes. He embraced me with bony arms, crying, "Welcome, my son. Welcome. Thrice welcome!"

"Thanks, Mr. Curd," I said.

"Call me Jerry," the old geezer said with a merry twinkle. "We're quite informal, all of us who are connected with the Program. We don't stand on ceremony."

He was beaming at me. "I see you have all your limbs intact."

I looked down at myself. "Yep. Still got everything."

"Splendid!" said Jerry. "Absolutely splendid." He turned to his three glum-visaged medical associates. "Isn't he splendid, gentlemen?"

They all agreed I was splendid.

"If I could get these chains off me and some decent chow into my tum, I'd feel as splendid as I look," I said.

Curd patted my back with a thin, big-knuckled hand. "Food you shall have, and in abundance. But I am afraid that the chains must remain fixed to your person for the time being. After all, you are a degenerate criminal."

"I dunno what kind of mollycod that wall fed you," I said heatedly. "But I'm actually a private op with a clean slate and an office in Bubble City. I Volunteered so I could get somebody to
listen
to me."

"Ah, but there's reason for everything, is there not?" smiled Curd as a guard nudged me toward a waiting aircab.

Jerry and his trio of dour-faced associates walked beside me to the cab. "We shall certainly be willing to listen anything you have to say, won't we, gentlemen?"

They all nodded.

"Good," I said. "Now we're getting somewhere."

"Oh, we're not there yet. The aircab will take us where we're getting," said Curd.

"I didn't mean it in that way, Jerry," I told him. "I mean, we are finally arriving at some basic truths."

"Quite. Yes, quite," nodded the old man. "I deal in them … basic scientific truths. Facts. Data. A theory is worthless until it becomes proven fact."

"You can easily have my story checked. Look in the Bubble City vidbook under 'Space, Samuel.' My number's there."

"I'm sure it is," nodded Curd. "Don't you agree that his office number is probably there, gentlemen?"

They all agreed that it probably was.

Somehow, despite all the ready agreement, I didn't feel I was really
reaching
Curd and his boys.

"Look, Jerry, I … '

"Into the cab, if you please," said the bony scientist.

And the guard shoved me inside.

The door hissed shut.

And we zoomed away.

* * *

The flight was short and fast.

We landed atop a tall, rectangular alum-ribbed building, one of several arranged in a loose circle around a wide patio of closebrick. There were also a half dozen long white structures mirrored in silver, all windowless.

Program Headquarters.

I was prodded inside, still in chains. I wanted to say a lot more to Curd, but with a cheery "See you soon, my boy!" he hustled away on a pedbelt with his three silent companions.

The guard moved me, chains clanking, along a hall toward my new cell.

"I don't belong here, you know," I said to him. "I'm not your ordinary Volunteer."

"There
are
no ordinary ones," the guard said darkly. "All Volunteers are crazy."

I gave him a dry chuckle. "I take it you think that I'm headed for some kind of awful experiment. The truth is, just as soon as Jerry checks out my office on Mars I'll be free to …"

"Free!" The guard cut in with a harsh growl. "You're part of the Program now. Which means you'll soon wish you were back in Hell scoopin' juice."

"You don't seem to understand what I'm telling you," I said.

He didn't say anything else, but as he was locking me in my cell he looked at me the way you'd look at a trapped dingo in an Earthzoo.

I was out of the fire — but it was quite possible I'd placed myself square in the frying pan.

My pessimism proved to be grounded in reality the next afternoon when the old man, flanked by two guards, confronted me in my cell and told me how proud I should be of myself for having Volunteered.

"But I'm not, and I didn't," I told him.

"Not what? Didn't what?"

"I'm not proud of myself, and I didn't Volunteer."

"But of course you did!" declared old Jerry Curd. "If you didn't, you wouldn't be here."

"But I
told
you — I'm a Mars op, working a case. Didn't you check up on me?"

"We surely did," nodded Curd, giving me a skeleton's smile. "And your records prove, beyond dispute, that you are a forger, kidnapper, rapist and mulch molester."

"That's all a
frame!
" I shouted, as two guards hustled me from the cell. "You're in league with that lousy wall!"

"There's little point in argument," said Jerry Curd. "We are satisfied that you are indeed a genuine psychopathic criminal."

His associates nodded happily. They were waiting outside the cell.

"As such," continued Curd, "you are now part of the Program."

"And what's that?" I asked glumly.

"Your natural curiosity will soon be assuaged," said the old man. "All we ask is your cooperation."

There was no longer any use trying to convince this skeletal old bone bag that I was legit. And I had no intention of cooperating in some devil's experiment on my tender carcass.

Despite my recent ordeals I was still a master in body combat.

I sprang into action, dispatching the first guard with a Venusian reverse hammer chop. As the second guard swung up his beamweapon I put him away with an Oranian double toe-thrust, grabbing the beamer as it slipped from his grasp.

I pointed the weapon at Jerry Curd. "Now
you're
the one who's going to cooperate. If you don't, I'll beam you to ash!"

"And just what do you wish me to do?" He was calm. Too damned calm. Which made me nervous.

"You're my ticket out of here," I snapped. "Until I'm clear of this planet I'm sticking to you like feathers to an Earthduck's back."

Curd looked amused. He exchanged a glance with his calm associates. "Do you actually imagine that I would allow a genuine Volunteer to leave the Program?"

"It's not your choice anymore, Buster!" I said. "I'm calling the shots now. The ball's in my end of the court. I don't play your game, you play
mine!
"

"Your command of ancient sports clichés is impressive," said Curd. "But your actions are fruitless and time consuming."

I prodded him forward with the beamer "Let's go."

"Where?"

"To the rocket launchport. You're going to be my personal escort aboard the next tub out of here."

Curd turned to his associates. "Based on his previous record of erratic behavior, his present actions are within the scope of his personality curve. He'll have to be put on Z-15."

They all nodded.

"What's Z-15?" I asked.

"A simple drug of my invention. One injection and your will to resist is eliminated. You'll be incapable of physical violence. I had hoped to avoid using it, since your high-spirited antics rather amuse me."

"You seem to overlook the fact that
I've
got the weapon!" I growled.

"I overlook nothing," he said, moving toward a wall alarm near the cell door.

"Keep away from that!" I ordered, bringing up the beamer.

"You have absolutely no chance at escape," the old man said. "And you can do me no harm with that gun."

"If you touch that alarm you'll find out how much harm I can do!"

He smiled. And turned to the alarm.

I fired. The beamblast tore off his right arm. Which
didn't
stop him. With his left, he pressed the alarm stud.

The building keened with sirens.

I gaped at Curd. His right arm was charred metal. Oil dripped from it.

"Naturally, I sent a robot in my place," he said. "To be certain you'd cooperate. My caution was well justified."