Starman Jones (6 page)

A voice, civil, firm, and official, spoke at Max’s elbow. “Is this person annoying you, sir?” Max turned and found a policeman standing behind him. He started to speak, then bit off the words as he realized the question had been addressed to Sam.

Sam took hold of Max’s upper arm in a gesture that was protective and paternal, but quite firm. “Not at all, officer, thank you.”

“Are you sure? I received word that this chico was headed this way and I’ve had my eye on him.”

“He’s a friend of mine. I was waiting for him here.”

“As you say. We have a lot of trouble with vagrants. They all seem to head for Earthport.”

“He’s not a vagrant. He’s a young friend of mine from the country and I’m afraid he’s gotten a bit confused. I’ll be responsible.”

“Very well, sir.”

“Not at all.” Max let himself be led away. When they were out of earshot Sam said, “That was close. That nosy clown would have had us both in the bull pen. You did all right, kid—kept your lip zipped at the right time.”

They were around the corner into a less important street before Sam let go his grip. He stopped and faced Max, grinning. “Well, kid?”

“I should’a’ told that cop about you!”

“Why didn’t you? He was right there.”

Max found himself caught by contradictory feelings. He was angry with Sam, no doubt about it, but his first unstudied reaction at seeing him had been the warm pleasure one gets from recognizing a familiar face among strangers—the anger had come a split second later. Now Sam looked at him with easy cynicism, a quizzical smile on his face. “Well, kid?” he repeated. “If you want to turn me in, let’s go back and get it over with. I won’t run.”

Max looked back at him peevishly. “Oh, forget it!”

“Thanks. I’m sorry about it, kid. I really am.”

“Then why did you do it?”

Sam’s face changed suddenly to a sad, far-away look, then resumed its cheerful cynicism. “I was tempted by an idea, old son—every man has his limits. Someday I’ll tell you. Now, how about a bit to eat and a gab? There’s a joint near here where we can talk without having the nosies leaning over our shoulders.”

“I don’t know as I want to.”

“Oh, come now! The food isn’t much but it’s better than mulligan.”

Max had been ready with a stiff speech about how he would not turn Sam in, but he certainly did not want to eat with him; the mention of mulligan brought him up short. He remembered uneasily that Sam had not inquired as to
his
morals, but had shared his food.

“Well…okay.”

“That’s my boy!” They went on down the street. The neighborhood was a sort to be found near the port in any port city; once off the pompous Avenue of the Planets it became more crowded, noisier, more alive, and somehow warmer and more friendly despite a strong air of “keep your hand on your purse.” Hole-in-the-wall tailor shops, little restaurants none too clean, cheap hotels, honky-tonks, fun arcades, exhibits both “educational” and “scientific,” street vendors, small theaters with gaudy posters and sounds of music leaking out, shops fronting for betting parlors, tattoo parlors fronting for astrologers, and the inevitable Salvation Army mission gave the street flavor its stylish cousins lacked. Martians in trefoil sunglasses and respirators, humanoids from Beta Corvi III, things with exoskeletons from Allah knew where, all jostled with humans of all shades and all blended in easy camaraderie.

Sam stopped at a shop with the age-old symbol of three golden spheres. “Wait here. Be right out.”

Max waited and watched the throng. Sam came out shortly without his coat. “Now we eat.”

“Sam! Did you pawn your coat?”

“Give the man a cigar! How did you guess?”

“But… Look, I didn’t know you were broke; you looked prosperous. Get it back, I’ll… I’ll pay for our lunch.”

“Say, that’s sweet of you, kid. But forget it. I don’t need a coat this weather. Truth is, I was dressed up just to make a good impression at—well, a little matter of business.”

Max blurted out, “But how did you…” then shut up. Sam grinned. “Did I steal the fancy rags? No. I encountered a citizen who believed in percentages and engaged him in a friendly game. Never bet on percentages, kid; skill is more fundamental. Here we are.”

The room facing the street was a bar, beyond was a restaurant. Sam led him on through the restaurant, through the kitchen, down a passage off which there were card rooms, and ended in a smaller, less pretentious dining room; Sam picked a table in a corner. An enormous Samoan shuffled up, dragging one leg. Sam nodded, “Howdy, Percy.” He turned to Max. “A drink first?”

“Uh, I guess not.”

“Smart lad. Lay off the stuff. Irish for me, Percy, and we’ll both have whatever you had for lunch.” The Samoan waited silently. Sam shrugged and laid money on the table, Percy scooped it up.

Max objected, “But I was going to pay.”

“You can pay for the lunch. Percy owns the place,” he added. “He’s offensively rich, but he didn’t get that way by trusting the likes of me. Now tell me about yourself, old son. How you got here? How you made out with the astrogators…everything. Did they kill the fatted calf?”

“Well, no.” There seemed to be no reason not to tell Sam and he found that he wanted to talk. Sam nodded at the end.

“About what I had guessed. Any plans now?”

“No. I don’t know what to do now, Sam.”

“Hmm…it’s an ill wind that has no turning. Eat your lunch and let me think.”

Later he added, “Max, what do you
want
to do?”

“Well… I wanted to be an astrogator…”

“That’s out.”

“I know.”

“Tell me, did you want to be an astrogator and nothing else, or did you simply want to go into space?”

“Why, I guess I never thought about it any other way.”

“Well, think about it.”

Max did so. “I want to go to space. If I can’t go as an astrogator, I want to go anyhow. But I don’t see how. The Astrogators’ Guild is the only one I stood a chance for.”

“There are ways.”

“Huh? Do you mean put in for emigration?”

Sam shook his head. “It costs more than you could save to go to one of the desirable colonies—and the ones they give you free rides to I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemies.”

“Then what do you mean?”

Sam hesitated. “There are ways to wangle it, old son—if you do what I say. This uncle of yours—you were around him a lot?”

“Why, sure.”

“Talked about space with you?”

“Certainly. That’s all we talked about.”

“Hmm…how well do you know the patter?”

The patter?” Max looked puzzled. “I suppose I know what everybody knows.”

“Where’s the worry hole?”

“Huh? That’s the control room.”

“If the cheater wants a corpse, where does he find it?”

Max looked amused. “That’s just stuff from SV serials, nobody talks like that aboard ship. The cook is the cook, and if he wanted a side of beef, he’d go to the reefer for it.”

“How do you tell a ‘beast’ from an animal?”

“Why, a ‘beast’ is a passenger, but an animal is just an animal, I guess.”

“Suppose you were on a ship for Mars and they announced that the power plant had gone blooie and the ship was going to spiral into the Sun? What would you think?”

“I’d think somebody was trying to scare me. In the first place, you wouldn’t be ‘on’ a ship—‘in’ is the right word. Second, a spiral isn’t one of the possible orbits. And third, if a ship was headed for Mars from Earth, it couldn’t fall into the Sun; the orbit would be incompatible.”

“Suppose you were part of a ship’s crew in a strange port and you wanted to go out and look the place over. How would you go about asking the captain for permission?”

“Why, I wouldn’t.”

“You’d just jump ship?”

“Let me finish. If I wanted to hit dirt, I’d ask the first officer; the captain doesn’t bother with such things. If the ship was big enough, I’d have to ask my department head first.” Max sat up and held Sam’s eye. “Sam—you’ve been spaceside. Haven’t you?”

“What gave you that notion, kid?”

“What’s your guild?”

“Stow it, Max. Ask me no questions and I’ll sell you no pigs in a poke. Maybe I’ve studied up on the jive just as you have.”

“I don’t believe it,” Max said bluntly.

Sam looked pained. Max went on, “What’s this all about? You ask me a bunch of silly questions—sure, I know quite a bit about spaceside; I’ve been reading about it all my life and Uncle Chet would talk by the hour. But what of it?”

Sam looked at him and said softly, “Max—the
Asgard
is raising next Thursday—for starside. Would you like to be in her?”

Max thought about it. To be in the fabulous
Asgard,
to be heading out to the stars, to be—he brushed the vision aside. “Don’t talk that way, Sam! You know I’d give my right arm. Why needle me?”

“How much money have you?”

“Huh? Why?”

“How much?”

“I haven’t even had time to count it.” Max started to haul out the wad of bills he had been given; Sam hastily and unobtrusively stopped him.

“Psst!” he protested. “Don’t flash a roll in here. Do you want to eat through a slit in your throat? Keep it down!”

Startled, Max took the advice. He was still more startled when he finished the tally; he had known that he had been given quite a lot of money but this was more than he had dreamed. “How much?” Sam persisted. Max told him, Sam swore softly. “Well, it will just have to do.”

“Do for what?”

“You’ll see. Put it away.”

As Max did so he said wonderingly, “Sam, I had no idea those books were so valuable.”

“They aren’t.”

“Huh?”

“It’s malarkey. Lots of guilds do it. They want to make it appear that their professional secrets are precious, so they make the candidate put up a wad of dough for his reference books. If those things were published in the ordinary way, they’d sell at a reasonable price.”

“But that’s right, isn’t it? As the Worthy High Secretary explained, it wouldn’t do for just anybody to have that knowledge.”

Sam made a rude noise and pretended to spit “What difference would it make? Suppose you still had them—you don’t have a ship to conn.”

“But…” Max stopped and grinned. “I can’t see that it did any good to take them away from me anyhow. I’ve read them, so I know what’s in them.”

“Sure you know. Maybe you even remember some of the methods. But you don’t have all those columns of figures so you can look up the one you need when you need it. That’s what they care about.”

“But I do! I read them, I tell you.” Max wrinkled his forehead, then began to recite: “‘Page 272, Calculated Solutions of the Differential Equation of Motion by the Ricardo Assumption—’” He began to reel off a series of seven-place figures. Sam listened in growing surprise, then stopped him.

“Kid, you really remember that? You weren’t making it up?”

“Of course not, I
read
it.”

“Well, I’ll be a beat up… Look, you’re a page-at-a-glance reader? Is that it?”

“No, not exactly. I’m a pretty fast reader, but I do have to read it. But I don’t forget. I never have been able to see how people forget. I can’t forget anything.”

Sam shook his head wonderingly. “I’ve been able to forget a lot of things, thank Heaven.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe we should forget the other caper and exploit this talent of yours. I can think of angles.”

“What do you mean? And what other caper?”

“Hmm…no, I was right the first time. The idea is to get away from here. And with your funny memory the chances are a whole lot better. Even though you sling the slang pretty well I was worried. Now I’m not.”

“Sam, stop talking riddles. What are you figuring on?”

“Okay, kid, I’ll lay it on the table.” He glanced around, leaned forward, and spoke even more quietly. “We take the money and I spread it around carefully. When the
Asgard
raises, we’re signed on as crewmen.”

“As apprentices? We wouldn’t even have time for ground school. And besides you’re too old to ’prentice.”

“Use your head! We don’t have enough to pay one apprentice fee, let alone two, in any space guild—and the
Asgard
isn’t signing ’prentices anyhow. We’ll be experienced journeymen in one of the guilds, with records to prove it.”

When the idea soaked in, Max was shocked. “But they put you in jail for that!”

“Where do you think you are now?”

“Well, I’m not in jail. And I don’t want to be.”

“This whole planet is one big jail, and a crowded one at that. What chance have you got? If you aren’t born rich, or born into one of the hereditary guilds, what can you do? Sign up with one of the labor companies.”

“But there are non-hereditary guilds.”

“Can you pay the fee? You’ve got a year, maybe two until you’re too old to ’prentice. If you were sharp with cards you might manage it—but can you earn it? You should live so long! Your old man should have saved it; he left you a farm instead.” Sam stopped suddenly, bit his thumb. “Max, I’ll play fair. Your old man did leave you a fair start in life. With the money you’ve got you can go home, hire a shyster, and maybe squeeze that Montgomery item out of the money he swindled for your farm. Then you can buy your apprenticeship in some guild. Do it, kid. I won’t stand in your way.” He watched Max narrowly.

Max reflected that he had just refused a chance to pick a trade and be given a free start. Maybe he should reconsider. Maybe…“No! That’s not what I want. This…this, uh, scheme of yours, how do we do it?”

Sam relaxed and grinned. “My boy!”

Sam got them a room over Percy’s restaurant. There he coached him. Sam went out several times and Max’s money went with him. When Max protested, Sam said wearily, “What do you want? To hold my heart as security? Do you want to come along and scare ’em out of the dicker? The people I have to reason with will be taking chances. Or do you think you can arrange matters yourself? It’s your money and my know-how…that’s the partnership.”

Max watched him leave the first time with gnawing doubts, but Sam came back. Once he brought with him an elderly, gross woman who looked Max over as if he were an animal up for auction. Sam did not introduce her but said, “How about it? I thought a mustache would help.”