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Ch. 07 · The Man Who Staked The Stars

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  Chapter seven of the Man Who Staked the Stars by Catherine MacLean. This LibriVox
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  recording is in the public domain. Chapter seven. Behind a silver door,
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  a bell rang. Suddenly, a spaceship was approaching. It was still early.
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  They would see the globe aloon and assume that Bryce had not yet arrived.
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  The spaceship itself might be armed illegally, but those within would not blast
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  the globe without checking its interior. Bryce glanced up at the silver door in
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  the cliff and arranged his position so as to be lounging on one elbow,
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  with his gun hand lying relaxed under a thin curtain of leaves. The magnematic
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  was pointed up toward the corridor door. There were a few tall bushes between
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  the base of the cliff and himself, but the silver central door was five
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  feet up a flight of stone, and in clear view. Four flights of
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  steps radiated away from the circular door to the hull, like spokes from an
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  axle, all of them leading down to the inside surfaces of the globe.
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  As he waited, he heard the faint clang of magnetic souls hitting the metal
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  of the airlock, and then the door chimes that announced that the airlock was
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  being used. Someone was coming in. He could follow their action in his
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  mind, timing them now. They would be floating in the vestibule, facing
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  a circular wall with a door, the wall spinning silently and rapidly, and
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  the door in its center turning slowly end over end. The door marked the
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  axis of rotation. There was a turning bar with handles running through the center
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  of the airlock. They would float up to that and grip it to pick
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  up spin until the vestibule seemed to be rotating around them, and only the
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  circular wall and the central door seemed to be steady. Beyond it would be
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  the corridor, and then the silver door. The door in the cliff dilated
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  silently. Two spacesuited men stood in it. It was incredible that he had
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  let them come in without seeing the door open. In the first split second,
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  he saw that neither of them was a rillo. In the second instant,
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  he saw that no weapons were visible, but that one stood slightly behind
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  the other and his right arm was hidden. They had happened to come to
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  the entrance at an angle to his orientation, almost at right angles, and
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  they would be confused for a moment before they identified his shape. For to
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  their orientation, if they used earth thought for it, he would seem to
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  be leaning head downward on an almost vertical slope. He took advantage of the
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  lag to move his gun under its curtain of leaves and get the sights lined
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  them. They swung their eyes around the circle and saw him. Mister Carter
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  asked the foremost one. Their face plates were still closed and their voices slightly
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  distorted by transmission to the helmet speaker, but he could hear a note of
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  surprise as the first one spoke. The second one moved his hidden arm slightly,
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  as if he were holding something, bryce did not tighten his finger on
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  the trigger. These could be mere innocent sightseers. The position of his head
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  almost upside down relative to theirs was probably confusing them, though almost certainly they
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  had studied trimensional photographs of him. At any rate, they probably were aware
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  that they were standing like targets in the corridor doorway, and would be in
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  no mood to postpone action. Take off your helmets, gentlemen, make yourselves
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  at home. It was a partial admission that he was the man they wanted,
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  but not certain enough for a decision. He saw the shoulder twitch that
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  meant that the second one's hidden hand jerked for a moment of uncertainty, and
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  he thought he saw something glitter under the first one's arm, the old trick
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  of shooting from under a friend's screening arm. Mister Bryce Carter, the foremost
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  one, was asking again. Bryce smiled. Now, Pierce, he said,
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  he had turned on the two way speaker and tuned it to the ship
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  as he came in. Immediately, the voice came in the corridor behind them,
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  Stand still, you're covered. There was no chance that anyone could genuinely
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  be behind them, but the rear one whirled and snapped a startled shot into
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  the darkened corridor, and the other leaped sideways down from the doorway, drawing
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  his gun with blurred speed and leveling on Bryce's His feet left contact with the
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  sill. He was falling slowly, almost floating, and it should have been
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  an easy shot except for something he had obviously forgotten, or he never would
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  have leaped. Bryce disregarded him as a danger and threw three shots at the
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  other, who still stood startled and off balance in the corridor, firing three
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  with his inexperienced right hand to make sure of placing even one. The figure
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  dropped out of sight in the corridor. In the flick of time that Bryce's
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  eyes had been away from the falling one, the path of the man's leap
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  had begun to curve strangely, until now he seemed to be floating in a
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  curve, flying sideways and upward, faster and faster as he approached the hull.
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  The rule of conservation and momentum was having its way to the man's dizzied
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  eyes. As he tried to keep Bryce within his side long enough to fire,
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  it must have seemed that the ground began inexplicably to turn and slide.
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  By that suddenly the whole shell was turning around him like a big wheel,
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  carrying his target up the wall and over his hat. He was almost to
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  the sliding ground when a bush caught at his feet and yanked them from under
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  him with a crackling of branches, and the bottom tried of a flight of
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  stairs swung at his head like a gigantic club. Among the sudden splintering of
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  branches and snapping of vines was a crunching thud which sounded final to anyone within
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  a globe, it did not ordinarily appear to be spinning. The only sign
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  it was was the comfortable pseudo gravity for anyone standing on hull level. But
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  to those who approached the ground from the lighter G corridor, the stairs were
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  necessary, stairs whose treads were oddly dipped in the middle in a shallow U.
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  By bracing against one side of the U coming down and on the other
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  side going up, one invisibly picked up enough speed to match the speed of
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  the ground level jumping was the equivalent of jumping out of a moving car at
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  forty feet a second. The sixteen feet a second half of the corridor plus
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  an extra thirty feet a second spin the side slip speed of an eighteen foot
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  drop where it had looked like five. It was probably these added extra distances
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  in the air. Bryce decided that sometimes made the bird flights look so bewilderingly
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  variable in speed and direction. He had not thought before how difficult it would
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  be to plot a straight course from one side of the globe to the other.
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  He waited for a sign of motion, his magnomatic ready looking up at
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  the gunman line overhead forty feet away on the other side, of the globe.
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  The limp figure was unmoving. It looked badly tangled in vines, and
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  its gun was gone. There was no need to shoot, but he wondered
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  suddenly if he had, what kind of a curve would the bullet have followed.
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  There was no sound from the other but Bryce hesitated to climb the stairs
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  and put his head above floor level of the corridor. A voice might give
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  the other direction for a snapshot, if that's what he was waiting for.
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  Bryce chanced speaking, I've got this one, Pierce. How's the other?
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  The televiewer in the entrance hall replied, lying on his back with his gun
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  five feet away. You are right, yes. Bryce walked around the circumference
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  of the globe and searched in the vines for the missing weapon of number one.
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  The body in the spacesuit nearby was quite definitely a corpse. He saw
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  the gun glittering a little further on and picked it up, wiping off leap
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  pulp on a clean patch of moss. It was a heavy duty police pacifier,
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  a distant stunner adjusted to a narrow beam. He climbed to the corridor
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  and collected the other weapon. It was a police pacifier too. They had
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  not meant direct murder then, but only to stun him and deliver him to
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  a rillow cod How are you doing with their ship? Bryce asked, is
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  it armed? Armament for spaceships was illegal, and careful official inspection made it
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  rare. I didn't wait to see. Pierce's voice came apologetically after a pause
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  in which some background noise sounded like a crash came over the televir speaker.
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  It started swinging around when I came in sight, so I just rammed it
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  with that pretty ornamental nose spike backing off now with the forward breaking jets.
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  Then whoever's inside is probably either space frozen or cooked. Jockey that ship around
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  on the spike and give her a four minute shove toward Earth. Then push
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  that button that collapses the ornamental veins on the spike and let it pull loose
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  when you start breaking. I don't want any ship hulks floating around here.
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  I I cap go slow on those breaking jets. When you pull loose,
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  the backwash could touch your hull. Pierce returned and came in to help Bryce
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  drag the corpses through the airlock and into space. They braced against the silver
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  curve of the floating spaceship and gave the body a combined strong shove toward Earth.
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  Spinning slowly and over end. It dwindled into a dark speck against the
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  glowing orb of Earth, destined to be a meteorite and make a small bright
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  streak in the Earth's sky. Several days later, when the tubes cank out,
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  the fuel runs down, the cold creeps into where I lie. Pearce
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  was reciting as they went back into the globe for the second corpse. I'll
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  take the meteor's trail, go home to Earth and make a Viking's funeral in
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  the sky. This is too easy, Bryce complained, as they watched the
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  second corpse fade from sight. The trouble is in space, all corpses are
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  delcti. It's an incentive launch your enemies. Gaucho Country did all right under
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  that system, Pierce said somberly, and so did the American Frontier. He
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  floated motionless. A space suited figure turned toward the gray, green misted globe
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  of Earth that shone against the black star sprinkled sky, as if he could
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  have reached out and touched it. The sun caught the planet on its day
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  hemisphere and reflected brilliantly from a shadowy blue glaze of water that was the Mediterranean,
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  turning half of it to white fire. Bryce's earphones picked up Pierce's voice
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  again. Frontier born nations always look back and say that the first years were
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  the best. The words caught at something Bryce had felt before. He looked
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  at Earth hanging splendidly in space. It was beautiful and he was fond of
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  it. But he said, I don't think we'll ever go back, nor
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  would mankind itself never again, through all conquests from this point in time,
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  would mankind go back down into the mesh of gravity to be a thin film
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  over the surface of a planet. Give Old Earth a smile, Bryce,
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  We've hatched for a moment longer. Bryce hung, watching Earth turning below.
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  The management of U T was down there. He'd be damned if he let
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  them get away with thinking they could tell him what to do, or tell
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  the belt where a line should be extended, and the colony planted the belt
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  was his country, not theirs. Space belonged to the people who lived in
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  it. No taxation without representation, Pierre said, irrelevantly, as if he
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  had been reading Bryce's thoughts. They jetted back to the ship into the space
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  lock from Tier Country. Bryce said as he stepped into the cubicle of the
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  revolving door. Gently tightening elastic bands drew him into position within the man shaped
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  mold. What's a frontier on your terms? Roy? When he was in
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  place, the other half of the rubbery air excluding mold closed on him when
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  the air tight cylinder rotated, delivering him into the interior of the ship.
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  He pushed the button impatiently to have it revolve back for peers, but it
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  remained obstinately open it's servo, refusing to close on a mold full of air
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  and rotate air back to release into space. Bryce remembered then this was something
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  he didn't have to bother with when he flew alone, for when going in
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  or out, he was always in the door when it rotated, it never
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  turned empty. Beside the door on a hook hung an inflated pressure suit,
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  complete with gloves, boots, and helmet. Except for the absence of any
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  sign of a head or face inside the dark translucence of the helmet, it
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  looked like a full sized man. Bryce reached it down and placed it in
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  the mold and watched, grinning as the mold closed and the door rotated,
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  delivering the man form to an equivalent hook in the space lock. The doll
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  was known by all spacemen as Hector Dimwitdie, and every ship had one or
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  two. There were a thousand yarns and jokes circulating about the adventures of the
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  hectors, most of them lewed, and a few of them true. Pierce's
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  answer was in his earphones a frontiers where people go when they are young,
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  broke, or have the cops after them. Right, suppose I stake the
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  broke and loan them transport and offer the fugitives unregistered safety to receive mail and
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  buy supplies. You do that, Pierce stepped out of the door, and
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  they took off their helmets. Yes, when I am my own man,
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  not working for ut. If you do that, you bring in ten times
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  as many of them broke who wanted to settle there? And Pierce took a
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  long jump and understanding, saying softly, they're dependent on you, to you
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  and praying for your health and prosperity as long as you hold their loans and
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  secrets for with your death or bankruptcy, another man might come to your books
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  to read the records of your loans and demand payment and give the secrets to
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  the police or keep them for his blackmail. But to do it is to
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  take a risk of murder or arrest, and a high cost in hard work
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  and money. Why do you want to do this? What payment do you
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  take? They pay by being my men, grateful and ready to back me
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  up when I want help. Later. They don't have to be grateful,
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  for they know I can call any loan if the owner crosses me, and
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  I've built a reputation for an occasional fit of a rational temper that is threat
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  enough for anyone to avoid crossing me without feeling that I wanted to threaten or
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  force them. As for the fugitives, they pay enough by wanting the Belt
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  to be or organized as a nation independent of earth, so that the hand
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  of the law can't stretch out and drag them back, and they can become
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  wealthy and open business in the million chances for wealth that lie around them in
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  the Belt. They don't know that they want this yet, but they will
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  see it when it is told to them. I can't do any of this
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  now. It's suspended for as long as I am part of UT and have
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  to drag the dead weight of ten Earthtide conservatives with me in every decision.
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  End of Chapter seven read by Paul Hampton,