The Sam Gunn Omnibus (85 page)

Widely reviled during his lifetime
as a con man, a womanizer, and an out-and-out crook, the Sam Gunn depicted in
Solar’s biopic series comes across as daring, sharp-witted and, yes, lovable.
His adventures span the

solar
system, from Earth out beyond Pluto   

-NEW YORK TIMES-DAILY NEWS

SAM GUNN SERIES “A FRAUD” SAYS
CORPORATE MAGNATE

“Sam
Gunn was not the daring Robin Hood he’s depicted to be on Solar News’s series,”
claims Pierre D’Argent, CEO of Rockledge Industries, Inc.

“He was a conniving little schemer
who wouldn’t stop at anything, including blackmail, to get what he wanted.”

Mr. D’Argent, who had tangled with
Mr. Gunn several times in the past, hinted that Rockledge may take legal action
against Solar News for defamation, libel and fraud.

Asked what he thought of the rumors
that Mr. Gunn is returning to Earth, Mr. D’Argent said only, “God help us!”

-WALL STREET JOURNAL

NOVICE PRODUCER WINS EMMY

Jane
Avril Inconnu, producer of the smash-hit series
Sam Gunn,
won the Emmy Award for Best Producer of a Nonfiction Series at last night’s
awards ceremony in Beijing.

Wearing a cermet exoskeleton
because she is unaccustomed to the full gravity of Earth, Ms. Inconnu, who
recently married former astronaut Spencer Johansen, was overcome with emotion
as she accepted the award....

-ALL CHINA NEWS SERVICE

IS SAM GUNN DEAD?

WAS HE EVER?

With
all the hype raised by the Solar News biography of Sam Gunn, the question of
his alleged death has come to the forefront of the public’s attention.

According to reports, Gunn was
sucked into a mini-black hole in the Kuiper Belt, beyond the orbit of Pluto. It
was widely regarded as a oneway journey: either Gunn was crushed by the immense
gravitational tidal forces of the black hole, or he was propelled into a
different space-time dimension, forever separated from our own continuum.

But rumors are flying that Gunn is
on his way back! Either he has found a way to return through the black hole, or
he never fell into it in the first place. Physicists, astronomers—and
lawyers—are debating the possibilities hotly.

Former U.S. Senator and Associate
Justice of the International Court Jill Meyers, who was once an astronaut and
worked with Gunn, has out
f
itted a
fusion torch ship to go to the Kuiper Belt and meet Sam as he returns.

-SELENE GAZETTE

THE TWO WOMEN WERE SITTING ALONE IN THE COMFORT
ABLE
lounge aboard the fusion torch ship as it accelerated at a half-g toward the
outer reaches of the solar system.

Jade felt mildly uncomfortable at
the gravity load, three times what she was accustomed to on the Moon, but the medics
had assured her that her bones could stand the strain—although not much more.

Jill Meyers looked startlingly like
Sam Gunn, Jade thought: short, almost elfin in stature, with a plain round face
and a snub nose sprinkled with freckles. But her eyes were a clear and steady
tawny gold, and she wore her straight mousy-brown hair shoulder length.

“I really appreciate your inviting
me to make this trip with you,” Jade began.

Meyers shrugged lightly. “You’ve
earned it. I watched your entire series, beginning to end. I don’t remember
when I’ve laughed so much—and cried, too.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

“You really captured Sam, Ms.
Inconnu.”

“Please call me Jade.”

“Good. And I’m Jill.”

Jade had been stunned by Meyers’s
invitation to accompany her on this flight to the Kuiper Belt. It had come as
she was leaving the Emmy ceremonies in Beijing and starting back to Selene.
Does she know that Sam might be my father? Jade asked herself immediately. She
reasoned that Jill Meyers didn’t know, couldn’t know. Sam himself didn’t know
it. Still, she wondered.

“Your quarters are satisfactory?”
Meyers asked her.

“Completely! Spence says it’s the
best honeymoon suite he’s ever seen.”

Meyers laughed graciously and Jade
figured she had no idea how many honeymoon suites Spence had actually used.

“So what can I tell you about Sam
that you don’t already know?”

Jade clicked her belt recorder and
pretended to think about the question for a few moments. Then she answered, “You
were involved when Sam tried to sue the Pope, weren’t you?”

“More
than that, Jade. Much more than that. After all, I knew Sam back in the days
when we were both astronauts working for the old NASA.”

“Just
how old is Sam?”

“His
age? Well, Sam must be just about my own age. Never mind what that is. Suffice
to say we’ve both been around a long time. And neither of us is anywhere near
finished yet. I never did believe that he died out at that mini-black hole
beyond Pluto’s orbit. Not Sam.

“That’s
why I’m riding out there. He promised to marry me, even though I haven’t seen
the little sonofagun in almost twenty years.”

Jade
looked down at her wrist computer.

“What’re
you doing, trying to calculate his age? Or my age? If you want me to tell you
about Sam you’d better pay attention and stop the figuring. All right, Sam must
be nearly a hundred, maybe more. It’s hard to tell. He acts like he’s twelve or
thirteen, most of the time. I’m younger, of course.

“Yes,
he’s a womanizer. And yes, he’s made and lost more fortunes than I’ve got
freckles on my nose. So what? He’s Sam Gunn, the one and only.

“You
want to know about the time he tried to sue the Vatican?”

Jade
nodded vigorously.

“All right. But stop trying to calculate my age!”

WHO ELSE BUT SAM GUNN
WOULD SUE THE POPE?

I’d known Sam since we were both
astronauts with NASA, riding the old shuttle to the original Mac Dac Shack—but
sue the
Pope
? That’s Sam.

At first I thought it was a joke,
or at least a grandstand stunt. Then I began to figure that it was just the
latest of Sam’s ploys to avoid marrying me. I’d been chasing him for years,
subtly at first but once I’d retired from the Senate, quite openly.

It got to be a game that we both
enjoyed. At least, I did. It was fun to see the panicky look on Sam’s Huck Finn
face when I would bring up the subject of marriage.

“Aw, come on, Jill,” he would say. “I’d
make a lousy husband. I like women too much to marry one of ‘em.”

I
would smile my most
Sphinx-like smile and softly reply, “You’re not getting any younger, Sam. You
need a good woman to look after you.”

And he’d arrange to disappear. I swear,
his first expedition out to the Asteroid Belt was as much to get away from me
as to find asteroids for mining. He came close to getting himself killed then,
but he created the new industry of asteroid mining—and just about wiped out the
metals and minerals markets in most of the resource-exporting nations on Earth.
That didn’t win him any friends, especially among the governments of those
nations and the multinational corporations that fed off them.

I
still had
connections into the Senate’s intelligence committee in those days, and I knew
that at least three southern hemisphere nations had put out contracts on Sam’s
life. To say nothing of the big multinationals. It was my warnings that saved
his scrawny little neck.

Sam lost the fortune he made on
asteroid mining, of course. He’d made and lost fortunes before that; it was
nothing new to him. He just went into other business lines; you couldn’t keep
him down for long.

He was funning a space freight
operation when he sued the Pope. And the little sonofagun
knew
that I’d be on the International Court of Justice panel that heard his suit.

“Senator Meyers, may I have a word
with you?” My Swedish secretary looked very upset. He was always very formal,
always addressed me by my old honorific, the way a governor of a state would be
called “Governor” even if he’s long retired or in jail or whatever.

“What’s the matter, Hendrick?” I asked
him.

Hendrick was in his office in The
Hague, where the World Court is headquartered. I was alone in my house in
Nashua, sipping at a cup of hot chocolate and watching the winter s first snow
sifting through the big old maples on my front lawn, thinking that we were
going to have a white Christmas despite the greenhouse warming. Until Hendricks
call came through, that is. Then I had to look at his distressed face on my
wall display screen.

“We have a very unusual...
situation here,” said Hendrick, struggling to keep himself calm. “The chief magistrate
has asked me to call you.”

From the look on Hendricks face, I thought
somebody must be threatening to unleash nuclear war, at least.

“A certain ... person,” Hendrick
said, with conspicuous distaste, “has entered a suit against the Vatican.”

“The Vatican!” I nearly dropped my
hot chocolate. “What’s the basis of the suit? Who’s entering it?”

“The basis is apparently over some
insurance claims. The litigant is an American citizen acting on behalf of the
nation of Ecuador. His name is,” Hendrick looked down to read from a document
that I could not see on the screen, “Samuel S. Gunn, Esquire.”

“Sam Gunn?” I did drop the cup; hot
chocolate spilled all over my white corduroy slacks and the hooked rug my great
grandmother had made with her very own arthritic fingers.

SAM WAS OPERATING
out of Ecuador in those days. Had
himself a handsome suite of offices in the presidential palace, no less. I drove
through the slippery snow to Boston and took the first Clipper out; had to use
my ex-Senatorial
and
World Court leverage to
get a seat amidst all the jovial holiday travelers.

I
arrived in Quito
half an hour later. Getting through customs with my one hastily packed travel
bag took longer than the flight. At least Boston and Quito are in the same time
zone; I didn’t have to battle jet lag.

“Jill!” Sam smiled when I swept
into his office, but the smile looked artificial to me. “What brings you down
here?”

People say Sam and I look enough
alike to be siblings. Neither Sam nor I believe it. He’s short, getting pudgy,
keeps his rusty-red hair cropped short. Shifty eyes, if you ask me. Mine are a
steady brown. I’m just about his height and the shape of my face is sort of
round, more or less like his. We both have a sprinkle of freckles across our
noses. But there all resemblance—physical and otherwise—definitely ends.

“You know damned well what brings me
down here,” I snapped, tossing my travel bag on one chair and plopping myself
in the other, right in front of his desk.

Sam had gotten to his feet and
started around the desk, but one look at the blood in my eye and he retreated
back to his own swivel chair. He had built a kind of platform behind the desk
to make himself seem taller than he really was.

He put on his innocent little boy
face. “Honest, Jill, I haven’t the foggiest idea of why you’re here. Christmas
vacation?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“You didn’t bring a justice of the
peace with you, did you?”

I
had to laugh.
Every time I asked myself why in the ever-loving blue-eyed world I wanted to marry
Sam Gunn, the answer always came down to that. Sam made me laugh. After a life
of grueling work as an astronaut and then the tensions and power trips of
Washington politics, Sam was the one man in the world who could make me see the
funny side of everything. Even when he was driving me to distraction, we both
had grins on our faces.

“I should have brought a shotgun,”
I said, trying to get serious.

“You wouldn’t do that,” he said,
with that impish grin of his. Then he added a worried, “Would you?”