Starman Jones (13 page)

Sam bounced up almost at once. “Sit tight, kid. I won’t be long.” He spoke to the barman, then disappeared toward the back. A young woman came over to Max’s table.

“Lonely, spaceman?”

“Uh, not especially.”

“But
I
am. Mind if I sit down?” She sank into the chair that Sam had vacated.

“Suit yourself. But my friend is coming right back.”

She didn’t answer but turned to the waiter at her elbow. “A brown special, Giggles.”

Max made an emphatic gesture of denial. “No!”

“What’s that, dear?”

“Look,” Max answered, blushing, “I may look green as paint—I am, probably. But I don’t buy colored water at house prices. I don’t have much money.”

She looked hurt. “But you have to order or I can’t sit here.”

“Well…” He glanced at the menu. “I could manage a sandwich, I guess.”

She turned again to the waiter. “Never mind the special, Giggles. A cheese on rye and plenty of mustard.” She turned back to Max. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Max.”

“Mine’s Dolores. Where are you from?”

“The Ozarks. That’s Earthside.”

“Now isn’t that a coincidence! I’m from Winnipeg—we’re neighbors!”

Max decided that it might appear so, from that distance. But as Dolores babbled on it became evident that she knew neither the location of the Ozarks nor that of Winnipeg, had probably never been on Terra in her life. She was finishing the sandwich while telling Max that she just adored spacemen, they were so romantic, when Sam returned.

He looked down at her. “How much did you take him for?”

Dolores said indignantly, “That’s no way to talk! Mr. Lipski doesn’t permit…”

“Stow it, kid,” Sam went on, not unkindly. “You didn’t know that my partner is a guest of Lippy. Get me? No ‘specials,’ no ‘pay-me’s’—you’re wasting your time. Now how much?”

Max said hastily, “It’s okay, Sam. All I bought her was a sandwich.”

“Well…all right. But you’re excused, sister. Later, maybe.”

She shrugged and stood up. “Thanks, Max.”

“Not at all, Dolores. I’ll say hello to the folks in Winnipeg.”

“Do that.”

Sam did not sit down. “Kid, I have to go out for a while.”

“Okay.”

Max started to rise, Sam motioned him back. “No, no. This I’d better do by myself. Wait here, will you? They won’t bother you again—or if they do, ask for Lippy.”

“I won’t have any trouble.”

“I hope not.” Sam looked worried. “I don’t know why I should fret, but there is something about you that arouses the maternal in me. Your big blue eyes I guess.”

“Huh? Oh, go sniff space! Anyway, my eyes are brown.”

“I was speaking,” Sam said gently, “of the eyes of your dewy pink soul. Don’t speak to strangers while I’m gone.”

Max used an expression he had picked up from Mr. Gee; Sam grinned and left.

But Sam’s injunction did not apply to Mr. Simes. Max saw the assistant astrogator appear in the doorway. His face was redder than usual and his eyes looked vague. He let his body revolve slowly as he surveyed the room. Presently his eyes lit on Max and he grinned unpleasantly.

“Well, well, well!” he said as he advanced toward Max. “If it isn’t the Smart Boy.”

“Good evening, Mr. Simes.” Max stood up.

“So it’s ‘good evening, Mr. Simes’! But what did you say under your breath?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Humph! I know! But I think the same thing about you, only worse.” Max did not answer. Simes went on, “Well, aren’t you going to ask me to sit down?”

“Have a seat, sir,” Max said without expression.

“Well, what do you know? The Smart Boy wants me to sit with him.” He sat, called the waiter, ordered, and turned back to Max. “Smart Boy, do you know why I’m sitting with you?”

“No, sir.”

“To put a flea in your ear, that’s why. Since you pulled that hanky-panky with the computer, you’ve been Kelly’s hair-faired—fair-haired—boy. Fair-haired boy,” he repeated carefully. “That gets you nowhere with me. Get this straight: you go sucking around the Astrogator the way Kelly does and I’ll run you out of the control room. Understand me?”

Max felt himself losing his temper. “What do you mean by ‘hanky-panky,’ Mr. Simes?”

“You know. Probably memorized the last half dozen transitions—now you’ve got Kelly and the Professor thinking you’ve memorized the book. A genius in our midst! You know what that is? That’s a lot of…”

Fortunately for Max they were interrupted; he felt a firm hand on his shoulder and Sam’s quiet voice said, “Good evening, Mr. Simes.”

Simes looked confused, then recognized Sam and brightened. “Well, if it isn’t the copper. Sit down, Constable. Have a drink.”

“Don’t mind if I do.” Sam pulled up another chair.

“Do you know Smart Boy here?”

“I’ve seen him around.”

“Keep your eye on him. That’s an order. He’s very, very clever. Too clever. Ask him a number. Pick a number between one and ten.”

“Seven.”

Mr. Simes pounded the table. “What did I tell you? He memorized it before you got here. Someday he’s going to memorize one and they’ll stencil it across his chest. You know what, Constable? I don’t trust smart boys. They get ideas.”

Reinforced by Sam’s calming presence, Max kept quiet. Giggles had come to the table as soon as Sam joined them; Max saw Sam write something on the back of a menu and pass it with money to the humanoid. But Mr. Simes was too busy with his monologue to notice. Sam let him ramble on, then suddenly interrupted. “You seem to have a friend here, sir.”

“Huh? Where?”

Sam pointed. At the bar Dolores was smiling and gesturing at the assistant navigator to join her. Simes focused his eyes, grinned and said, “Why, so I do! It’s my Great Aunt Sadie.” He got up abruptly.

Sam brushed his hands together. “That disposes of that. Give you a bad time, kid?”

“Sort of. Thanks, Sam. But I hate to see him dumped on Dolores. She’s a nice kid.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’ll roll him for every thin he has on him—and a good job, too.” His eyes became hard. “I like an officer who acts like an officer. If he wants to pin one on, he should do it in his own part of town. Oh, well.” Sam relaxed. “Been some changes, eh, kid? Things are different from the way they were when we raised ship at Terra.”

“I’ll say they are!”

“Like it in the Worry gang?”

“It’s more fun than I ever had in my life. And I’m learning fast—so Mr. Kelly says. They’re a swell bunch—except for
him
.” He nodded toward Simes.

“Don’t let him worry you. The best soup usually has a fly in it. Just don’t let him get anything on you.”

“I sure don’t intend to.”

Sam looked at him, then said softly, “Ready to take the dive?”

“Huh?”

“I’m getting our stake together. We’ll be all set.”

Max found it hard to answer. He had known that his transfer had not changed anything basic; he was still in as much danger as ever. But he had been so busy with the joy of hard, interesting work, so dead for sleep when he was not working, that the subject had been pushed back in his mind. Now he drew patterns on the table in the sweat from the glasses and thought about it. “I wish,” he said slowly, “that there was some way to beat it.”

“There is a way, I told you. Your record gets lost.”

Max raised his eyes. “What good would that do? Sure, it would get me another trip. But I don’t want just another trip; I want to stay with it.” He looked down at the table top and carefully sketched an hyperboloid. “I’d better go with you. If I go back to Terra, it’s the labor companies for me—even if I stay out of jail.”

“Nonsense.”

“What?”

“Understand me, kid. I’d like to have you with me. A time like that, having a partner at your elbow is the difference between—well, being down in the dumps and being on top. But you can stay in space, with a record as clean as a baby’s.”

“Huh? How?”

“Because you are changing guilds. Now only
one
paper has to get lost—your strike-out record with the stewards, cooks, and clerks. And they will never miss it because you aren’t on their books, anyhow. You start fresh with the chartsmen and computers, all neat and legal.”

Max sat still and was tempted. “How about the report to the Department of Guilds and Labor?”

“Same thing. Different forms to different offices. I checked. One form gets lost, the other goes in—and Steward’s Mate Jones vanishes into limbo while Apprentice Chartsman Jones starts a clean record.”

“Sam, why don’t
you
do it? With the drag you’ve got now you could switch to…uh, well, to…”

“To what?” Sam shook his head sadly. “No, old son, there is nothing I can switch to. Besides, there are reasons why I had better be buried deep.” He brightened. “Tell you what—I’ll pick my new name before I take the jump and tell you. Then someday, two years, ten, twenty, you’ll lay over at Nova Terra and look me up. We’ll split a bottle and talk about when we were young and gay. Eh?”

Max smiled though he did not feel happy. “We will, Sam. We surely will.” Then he frowned. “But, Sam, I don’t know how to wangle the deal—and you’ll be gone.”

“I’ll fix it before I leave. I’ve got Nelson eating out of my hand now. Like this: half cash down and half on delivery—and I’ll fix it so that you have something on him—never mind what; you don’t need to know yet. When you ground at Earthport, he asks you to mail the reports because you are going dirtside and he has work to finish. You check to see that the two reports you want are there, then you give him his pay off. Done.”

Max said slowly, “I suppose that’s best.”

“Quit fretting. Everybody has a skeleton in the closet; the thing is to keep ’em there and not at the feast.” He pushed an empty glass aside. “Kid, would you mind if we went back to the ship? Or had you planned to make a night of it?”

“No, I don’t mind.” Max’s elation at setting foot on his first strange planet was gone—Garson’s Hole was, he had to admit, a sorry sample of the Galaxy.

“Then let’s get saddled up. I’ve got stuff to carry and I could use help.”

It turned out to be four fairly large bundles which Sam had cached in public lockers. “What are they?” Max asked curiously.

“Tea cozies, old son. Thousands of them. I’m going to sell ’em to Procyon pinheads as skull caps.” Somewhat affronted, Max shut up.

Everything coming into the ship was supposed to be inspected, but the acting master-at-arms on watch at the lock did not insist on examining the items belonging to the Chief Master-at-Arms any more than he would have searched a ship’s officer. Max helped Sam carry the bundles to the stateroom which was the prerogative of the ship’s chief of police.

From Garson’s Planet to Halcyon around Nu Pegasi is a double dogleg of three transitions, of 105, 487, and 19 light-years respectively to achieve a “straight line” distance of less than 250 light-years. But neither straight-line distance nor pseudo-distance of transition is important; the
Asgard
covered less than a light-year between gates. A distance “as the crow flies” is significant only to crows.

The first transition was barely a month out from Garson’s Planet. On raising from there, Kelly placed Max on a watch in three, assigning him to Kelly’s own watch, which gave Max much more sleep, afforded him as much instruction (since the watch with Simes was worthless instruction-wise), and kept Max out of Simes’ way, to his enormous relief. Whether Kelly had planned that feature of it Max never knew—and did not dare ask.

Max’s watch was still an instruction watch, he had no one to relieve nor to be relieved by. It became his habit not to leave the control room until Kelly did, unless told to do so. This resulted in him still being thrown into the company of Dr. Hendrix frequently, since the Astrogator relieved the Chief Computerman and Kelly would usually hang around and chat…during which time the Astrogator would sometimes inquire into Max’s progress.

Occasionally the Captain would show up on Dr. Hendrix’s watch. Shortly after leaving Garson’s Planet, Dr. Hendrix took advantage of one such occasion to have Max demonstrate for Captain Blaine and First Officer Walther his odd talent. Max performed without a mistake although the Captain’s presence made him most self-conscious. The Captain watched closely with an expression of gentle surprise. Afterwards he said, “Thank you, lad. That was amazing. Let me see—what is your name?”

“Jones, sir.”

“Jones, yes.” The old man blinked thoughtfully. “It must be terrifying not to be able to forget—especially in the middle of the night. Keep a clear conscience, son.”

Twelve hours later, Dr. Hendrix said to him, “Jones, don’t go away. I want to see you.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Astrogator spoke with Kelly for a few moments, then again spoke to Max. “The Captain was impressed by your vaudeville act, Jones. He is wondering whether you have any parallel mathematical ability.”

“Well—no, sir. I’m not a lightning calculator, that is. I saw one in a sideshow once. He could do things I couldn’t.”

Hendrix brushed it aside. “Not important. I believe you told me that your uncle taught you some mathematical theory?”

“Just for astrogation, sir.”

“What do you think I am talking about? Do you know how to compute a transition approach?”

“Uh, I think so, sir.”

“Frankly, I doubt it, no matter how much theoretical drill Brother Jones gave you. But go ahead.”

“
Now
, sir?”

“Try it. Pretend you’re the officer of the watch. Kelly will be your assistant. I’ll just be audience. Work the approach we are on. I realize that we aren’t close enough for it to matter—but you are to assume that the safety of the ship depends on it.”

Max took a deep breath. “Aye aye, sir.” He started to get out fresh plates for the cameras.

Hendrix said, “No!”

“Sir?”

“If you have the watch, where’s your crew? Noguchi, help him.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Noguchi grinned and came over. While they were bending over the first camera, Noguchi whispered, “Don’t let him rattle you, pal. We’ll give him a good show. Kelly will help you over the humps.”

But Kelly did not help; he acted as “numbers boy” and nothing else, with no hint to show whether Max was right, or wildly wrong. After Max had his sights and had taken his comparison data between plates and charts he did not put the problem through the computer himself, but let Noguchi man the machine, with Kelly translating. After a long time and much sweat, the lights blinked what he hoped was the answer.