The Rolling Stones (15 page)

ASSETS RECOVERABLE

T
HE TWINS KEPT OUT OF THEIR FATHER
’
S WAY

for the next several days. He was unusually tender and affectionate with all of them but he never smiled and his mood was likely to flare suddenly and unexpectedly into anger. They stayed in their bunkroom and pretended to study—they actually did study some of the time. Meade and Hazel split the care of Lowell between them; the child’s feeling of security was damaged by the absence of his mother. He expressed it by temper tantrums and demands for attention.

Hazel took over the cooking of lunch and dinner; she was no better at it than Meade. She could be heard twice a day, burning herself and swearing and complaining that she was not the domestic type and never had had any ambitions that way. Never!

Dr. Stone phoned once a day, spoke briefly with her husband, and begged off from speaking to anyone else for the reason that she was much too busy. Roger Stone’s explosions of temper were most likely to occur shortly after these daily calls.

Hazel alone had the courage to quiz him about the calls. On the sixth day at lunch she said, “Well, Roger? What was the news today? Give.”

“Nothing much. Hazel, these chops are atrocious.”

“They ought to be good; I flavored ’em with my own blood.” She held out a bandaged thumb. “Why don’t you try cooking? But back to the subject. Don’t evade me, boy.”

“She thinks she’s on the track of something. So far as she can tell from their medical records, nobody has caught it so far who is known to have had measles.”

Meade said, “Measles? People don’t die of
that
, do they?”

“Hardly ever,” agreed her grandmother, “though it can be fairly serious in an adult.”

“I didn’t say it was measles,” her father answered testily, “nor did your mother. She thinks it’s related to measles, a mutant strain maybe—more virulent.”

“Call it ‘neomeasles’,” suggested Hazel. “That’s a good question-begging tag and it has an impressive scientific sound to it. Any more deaths, Roger?”

“Well, yes.”

“How many?”

“She wouldn’t say. Van is still alive, though, and she says that he is recovering. She
told
me,” he added, as if trying to convince himself, “that she thought she was learning how to treat it.”

“Measles,” Hazel said thoughtfully. “You’ve never had it, Roger.”

“No.”

“Nor any of the kids.”

“Of course not,” put in Pollux. Luna City was by long odds the healthiest place in the known universe; the routine childhood diseases of Earth had never been given a chance to establish.

“How did she sound, Son?”

“Dog tired.” He frowned. “She even snapped at me.”

“Not Mummy!”

“Quiet, Meade.” Hazel went on, “I’ve had measles, seventy or eighty years ago. Roger, I had better go over and help her.”

He smiled without humor. “She anticipated that. She said to tell you thanks but she had all the unskilled help she could use.”

“‘Unskilled help!’ I like that! Why, during the epidemic of ’93 there were times when I was the only woman in the colony able to change a bed. Hummph!”

Hazel deliberately waited around for the phone call the next day, determined to get a few words at least with her daughter-in-law. The call came in about the usual time; Roger took it. It was not his wife.

“Captain Stone? Turner, sir—Charlie Turner. I’m the third engineer. Your wife asked me to phone you.”

“What’s the matter? She busy?”

“Quite busy.”

“Tell her to call me as soon as she’s free. I’ll wait by the board.”

“I’m afraid that’s no good, sir. She was quite specific that she would not be calling you today. She won’t have time.”

“Fiddlesticks! It will only take her thirty seconds. In a big ship like yours you can hook her in wherever she is.”

The man sounded embarrassed. “I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Stone gave strict orders not to be disturbed.”

“But confound it, I—”

“I’m very sorry, sir. Good-by.” He left him sputtering into a dead circuit.

Roger Stone remained quiet for several moments, then turned a stricken face to his mother. “She’s caught it.”

Hazel answered quietly, “Don’t jump to conclusions, Son.” But in her own heart she had already reached the same conclusion. Edith Stone had contracted the disease she had gone to treat.

The same barren stall was given Roger Stone on the following day; by the third day they gave up the pretense. Dr. Stone was ill, but her husband was not to worry. She had already, before she gave into it herself, progressed far enough in standardizing a treatment that all the new cases—hers among them—were doing nicely. So they said.

No, they would not arrange a circuit to her bed. No, he could not talk to Captain Vandenbergh; the Captain was still too ill.

“I’m coming over!” Roger Stone shouted.

Turner hesitated. “That’s up to you, Captain. But if you do, we’ll have to quarantine you here. Dr. Stone’s written orders.”

Roger Stone switched off. He knew that that settled it; in matters medical Edith was a Roman judge—and he could not abandon his own ship, his family, to get to Mars by themselves. One frail old woman, two cocksure half-trained student pilots—no, he had to take his ship in.

They sweated it out. The cooking got worse, when anyone bothered to cook. It was seven endless, Earth-standard days later when the daily call was answered by, “Roger—hello, darling!”

“Edith! Are you all right?”

“Getting that way.”

“What’s your temperature?”

“Now, darling, I won’t have you quack-doctoring me. My temperature is satisfactory, as is the rest of my physical being. I’ve lost a little weight, but I could stand to—don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t. Listen—you come home! You hear me?”

“Roger dearest! I can’t and that’s settled. This entire ship is under quarantine. But how is the rest of my family?”

“Oh, shucks, fine, fine! We’re all in the pink.”

“Stay that way. I’ll call you tomorrow. Bye, dear.”

Dinner that night was a celebration. Hazel cut her thumb again, but not even she cared.

The daily calls, no longer a nagging worry but a pleasure, continued. It was a week later that Dr. Stone concluded by saying, “Hold on, dear. A friend of yours wants to speak with you.”

“Okay, darling. Love and stuff—good-by.”

“Roger Dodger?” came a bass voice.

“Van! You squareheaded bay window! I knew you were too mean to die.”

“Alive and kicking, thanks to your wonderful wife. But no longer with a bay window; I haven’t had time to regrow it yet.”

“You will.”

“No doubt. But I was asking the good doctor about something and she couldn’t give me much data. Your department. Rog, how did this speed run leave you for single-H? Could you use some go-juice?”

Captain Stone considered it. “Have you any surplus, Captain?”

“A little. Not much for this wagon, but it might be quite a lot for a kiddie cart like yours.”

“We had to jettison, did you know?”

“I know—and I’m sorry. I’ll see that a claim is pushed through promptly. I’d advance it myself, Captain, if alimony on three planets left me anything to advance.”

“Maybe it won’t be necessary.” He explained about the radar reflector. “If we could nudge back into the old groove we just might get together with our belongings.”

Vandenbergh chuckled. “I want to meet those kids of yours again; they appear to have grown up a bit in the last seven years.”

“Don’t. They’ll steal your bridgework. Now about this single-H: how much can you spare?”

“Enough, enough, I’m sure. This caper is worth trying, just for the sport. I’m sure it has never been done before. Never.”

The two ships, perfectly matched to eye and almost so by instrument, nevertheless had drifted a couple of miles apart while the epidemic in the liner raged and died out. The undetectable gravitational attraction between them gave them mutual escape velocity much less than their tiny residual relative motion. Up to now nothing had been done about it since they were still in the easiest of phone range. But now it was necessary to pump reactive mass from one to the other.

Roger Stone threw a weight fastened to a light messenger line as straight and as far as he could heave. By the time it was slowed to a crawl by the drag of the line a crewman from the
War God
came out after it on his suit jet. In due course the messenger line brought over a heavier line which was fastened to the smaller ship. Hand power alone took a strain on the line. While the mass of
Rolling Stone
was enormous by human muscle standards, the vector involved was too small to handle by jet and friction was nil. In warping in a space ship the lack of brakes is a consideration more important than power, as numerous dents to ships and space stations testify.

As a result of that gentle tug, two and a half days later the ships were close enough to permit a fuel hose to be connected between them. Roger and Hazel touched the hose only with wrench and space-suit gauntlet, not enough contact to affect the quarantine even by Dr. Stone’s standards. Twenty minutes later even that connection was broken and the
Stone
had a fresh supply of jet juice.

And not too soon. Mars was a ruddy gibbous moon, bulging ever bigger in the sky; it was time to prepare to maneuver.

“There it is!” Pollux was standing watch on the radar screen; his yelp brought his grandmother floating over.

“More likely a flock of geese,” she commented. “Where?”

“Right there. Can’t you see it?”

Hazel grudgingly conceded that the blip might be real. The next several hours were spent in measuring distance, bearing, and relative motion by radar and doppler and in calculating the cheapest maneuver to let them match with the errant bicycles, baggage, and books. Roger Stone took it as easily as he could, being hurried somewhat by the growing nearness of Mars. He finally settled them almost dead in space relative to the floating junk pile, with a slight drift which would bring them within three hundred yards of the mass—so he calculated—at closest approach a few hours hence.

They spent the waiting time figuring the maneuvers to rendezvous with Mars. The
Rolling Stone
would not, of course, land on Mars but at the port on Phobos. First they must assume an almost circular ellipse around Mars matching with Phobos, then as a final maneuver they must settle the ship on the tiny moon—simple maneuvers made fussy by one thing only; Phobos has a period of about ten hours; the
Stone
would have to arrive not only at the right place with the right speed and direction, but also at the right time. After the bicycles were taken aboard the ship would have to be nursed along while still fairly far out if she were to fall to an exact rendezvous.

Everybody worked on it but Buster, Meade working under Hazel’s tutelage. Pollux continued to check by radar their approach to their cargo. Roger Stone had run through and discarded two trial solutions and was roughing out another which, at last, seemed to be making sense when Pollux announced that his latest angulation of the radar data showed that they were nearly as close as they would get.

His father unstrapped himself and floated to a port. “Where is it? Good heavens, we’re practically sitting on it. Let’s get busy, boys.”

“I’m coming, too,” announced Hazel.

“Me, too!” agreed Lowell.

Meade reached out and snagged him. “That’s what you think, Buster. You and Sis are going to play a wonderful game called, ‘What’s for dinner?’ Have fun, folks.” She headed aft, towing the infant against his opposition.

Outside the bicycles looked considerably farther away. Cas glanced at the mass and said, “Maybe I ought to go across on my suit jet, Dad? It would save time.”

“I strongly doubt it. Try the heaving line, Pol.”

Pollux snapped the light messenger line to a padeye. Near the weighted end had been fastened a half a dozen large hooks fashioned of 6-gauge wire. His first heave seemed to be strong enough but it missed the cluster by a considerable margin.

“Let me have it, Pol,” Castor demanded.

“Let him be,” ordered their father. “So help me, this is the last time I’m going into space without a proper line-throwing gun. Make note of that, Cas. Put it on the shopping list when we go inside.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The second throw was seen to hit the mass, but when Pol heaved in the line came away, the hooks having failed to catch. He tried again. This time the floating line came taut.

“Easy, now!” his father cautioned. “We don’t want a bunch of bikes in our lap. There—’vast heaving. She’s started.” They waited.

Castor became impatient and suggested that they give the line another tug. His father shook his head. Hazel added, “I saw a green hand at the space station try to hurry a load that way. Steel plate, it was.”

“What happened?”

“He had started it with a pull; he thought he could stop it with a shove. They had to amputate both legs but they saved his life.” Castor shut up.

A few minutes later the disorderly mass touched down, bending a handlebar of one bike that got pinched but with no other damage. The twins and Hazel swarmed over the mass, working free on their safety lines and clicking on with their boots only to pass bicycles into the hold, where Roger Stone stowed them according to his careful mass distribution schedule.

Presently Pollux came across Castor’s “Not for Salvage” warning. “Hey, Cas! Here’s your notice.”

“It’s no good now.” Nevertheless he accepted it and glanced at it. Then his eyes snapped wider.

An endorsement had been added at the bottom:

Captain Stone came out to investigate the delay, took the paper and read it. He looked at his mother. “Hazel!”

“Me? Why, I’ve been right here in plain sight the whole time. How could I have done it?”

Stone crumpled the paper. “I do not believe in ghosts, inside straights, nor ‘Galactic Overlords.’”

If Hazel did it, no one saw her and she never admitted it. She persisted in the theory that the Galactic Overlord wasn’t really dead after all. To prove it, she revived him in her next episode.