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Ch. 02 · The Man Who Staked The Stars

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  Chapter two of the Man Who Staked the Stars by Katherine MacLean. This LibriVox
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  recording is in the public domain. The Man Who Staked the Stars by Katherine
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  McLean, Chapter two. In the exit lounge at floor five, Bryce Carter
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  stopped a moment and glanced at himself in the mirror. Thick neck, thick
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  body, a physique so evenly and heavily muscled that it looked fat until he
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  moved. Atop the thick body, a lean face that he didn't like stared
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  back at him. It was darkly tanned, with underlying freckles that were almost
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  black. Years had passed since he had worked in space, but the space
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  ten remained indelible. It was not a bland or pretty face. At the
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  dinner, deep in discussion with mister Juan, he had been surprised to find
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  find himself smiling at intervals irrepressibly. He hoped it had looked cordial and not
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  too much like a cat enjoying the company of mice. They had no defense
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  against him. The drugs organization could never be traced to him. The connection
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  was too well concealed. Even the organization knew nothing about him. The only
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  evidence which could make the connection was in his own mind. The only witness
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  against him was himself. He cast his mind back over the meeting and dinner,
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  but there had been no slips past the first shock of the chairman's announcement,
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  and that had been unobserved by anyone. The psychologists they had hired might
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  perhaps get a betraying flicker of expression from him in an interview. Many well
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  trained observers of human reactions could read expressions that keenly, but the interviewing of
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  all the board by the psychologist was not likely. The directors of the Board
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  were even now climbing into trains and strato planes to scatter back to the fire
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  points of the Earth. It would take many days for an investigating psychologist to
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  follow to interview each one. He and Irving would be last on the list,
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  for he went to Moon Bay City and Irving to Luna City. He
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  had weeks. He smiled, fastening bands and his cuffs that folded them tightly
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  on his wrists, zipping up his suit coat, and slipping on gloves.
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  He looked at himself again, where he had been wearing a conservative, dark
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  silk business suit with a short cape. He now seemed to be wearing a
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  tailored ski suit with an odd cowl, or a pressure suit without boots or
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  helmet, which is what it wants. Carrying the zipper up further would have
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  turned the cape to an air tight helmet bubble. Employees and executives passing in
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  and out of the ut building gave the clothes an approving an interested glance as
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  they passed. The justification by utility was obvious. It had cost money to
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  have a pressure suit designed light and flexible enough for comfortable wear, But long
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  ago he had grown irked by the repetitious business of climbing in and out of
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  clothes every time one stepped through a space lock. While over capes and hoods
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  were needed stepping outside of any temperate zone earth building in winter, a pressure
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  suit was completely independent of weather and regulated its own internal heat. Since the
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  suit had been designed, the manufacturer had begun to receive an increasing number of
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  orders for duplicates and was now being put into mass p Probably in these five
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  minutes he had just made many more sails for the manufacturer. He was setting
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  a style, he thought in please surprise. Stepping out of the building,
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  the salt wind hit him with a blast of cold and the automatic thermostatic wiring
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  in the suit countered with a wave of warmth as he leaned into the wind
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  and started to walk. The connection between the Union Hotel and the building he
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  had just left was an arched sidewalk that curved between them, five stories above
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  the sand and surf. The hotel was an impressively towering building against the ragged
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  sky, and as he walked, a gleam broke through from the hidden sunset
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  and spotlighted it and the low scudding clouds and a sudden glowing red. He
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  stopped and leaned against the balustrade to watch the red gleams reflecting from the bay
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  re purple clouds fled by low overhead, their colors changing as they moved.
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  This was something a man couldn't see in space or on the moon, but
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  after a moment he couldn't fully enjoy it because he was being watched. The
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  feeling was disturbing. Damn rubbernecks, he thought, and turned irritably, half
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  hoping that at least it would be an acquaintance or some pretty girls, but
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  there was no one watching him. A few pedestrians walked by hurriedly because it
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  was growing dark and the view that they had come to enjoy was fading.
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  The wind wrapped their enveloping capes around them and made them all look abnormally tall
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  and calumnar. It was darker. The sidewalk lights abruptly flicked on in a
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  flood of amber light that thickened the twilight beyond their circle to an other opaque,
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  purple curtain of darkness. He noticed a pedestrian walking slowly towards him from
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  the direction he had come. The figure approached more slowly than seemed natural,
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  with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets, as though lost in
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  thought. A trailer from the detective Agency. It was too soon for that.
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  If it were arranged that every member of the board betrailed still, it
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  could not have been arranged and begun so soon. Besides, there was something
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  more deadly than that in the walking man's indifference, a killer arranged by Beldman.
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  It would be natural for a Beldman or a Stout to take a chance
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  and fight back the direct way, but there was no evidence. How could
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  either of them have decided who to blame or who to fight. The few
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  huge buildings that stood dark against the night sky were being brightened now by lights
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  going on in hundreds of windows. In long, slender spans between them stretched
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  the aerial walks and the necklaces of amber lights that outlined them. The wind
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  blew colder across the walks, and the view of sea and sky that had
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  been visible from them was now blotted out by night. The walkers were going
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  in. There was small chance of sheltering himself in a crowd, or even
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  of keeping only one or two walkers between himself and the one who followed him.
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  At the first sight of the approaching figure, he had instinctively leaned back
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  against the concrete railings and taken his gun from its pocket holster, holding it
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  lightly in his gloved hand. An aged couple and a vigorous middle aged woman
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  hurrying in the opposite glanced at him without interest or alarm. His pose was
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  not menacing, and anyway, most men with money enough to travel carried hand
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  arms. This was an indirect effect of a federated nation's ruling that only hand
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  arms of a regulated deadliness be manufactured as the armament of nations. The ruling
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  had been carefully considered for other secondary effects for any nation growing over centralized and
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  militaristic was likely to arm at citizens universally for greater military power by numbers,
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  and then suffer the natural consequences of having armed their public opinion, an armed
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  man need not vote to be counted. And once having learned that lesson the
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  feeling that an armed man carried his bill of rights in his pocket, made
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  this the first clause of the ridden and unwritten constitutions of many suddenly democratic nations.
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  The right of the yeomanry to carry arms shall not be abridged. They
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  kept their guns, and with weapons instantly available to hot tempers, dueling came
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  back into custom in most places. All this had little effect on the large
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  calm manufacturing countries who had run the UN and now ran the FN, but
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  it made easy their decision that, since in space policing is almost impossible,
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  the citizens who venture there must be armed to protect themselves. Thus, in
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  spite of the continued outcry of a minority of Christian moralists, a holster pocket
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  was now built into all space suits. Bryce had grown up in a famine
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  country, an almost unpoliced area, and weapons had been as familiailiar to his
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  hands as fingers. Since he had passed twelve and when as a steel worker
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  he had been one of the first settlers in the foundry towns of the asteroid
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  belt. He had found life no gentler there, but it was all right
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  as far as he was concerned. He had heard of safer and duller ways
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  to live, but had never wanted them. Life as a moon based transport
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  manager had been a short interval of nonviolence, five years of startling calm,
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  which he had not yet grown accustomed to. The gun fitted into his hand
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  as comfortably as his thumb, or as the handshake of an old and trusted
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  friend, but it was useless here. Reluctantly, he slipped it back into
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  his pocket and began walking again. A director of ute couldn't shoot people on
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  intuition. He had barely stopped for account of ten and there was still distance
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  between them when he had turned. But the follower could be walking faster now,
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  narrowing the distance between them. If he had waited and fired. An
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  inspection of the man's pockets could have confirmed his judgment by the finding of an
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  assassin's illegal needle gun. That alone might be enough to satisfy the police if
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  he were still merely a space worker. But a director of ut couldn't live
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  that casually. It would be difficult to explain his certainty to the police,
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  and still more difficult to explain to the newspapers. He could not afford that
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  sort of publicity. Bryce led out a soft curse and lengthened his stride.
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  He had to wait for proof of the follower's intentions, and the only proof
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  would be to be attacked. And the first proof of that, since needle
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  guns are soundless and inconspicuous, would probably be a curari loaded needle in his
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  back. After that, the follower could inconspicuously drop his weapon over the balustrade
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  it self destroying mechanism set to melt it before it reached the sands far below.
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  However, since the follower certainly would not openly run after him, the
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  most logical thing to do, Bryce decided was to run to the hotel as
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  if he were in a hurry. The idea irritated him. He walked on
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  slowing. Perversely, it was irrational to walk, and he knew it,
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  But he walked, and the knowledge that it was irrational irritated him further.
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  The skin between his shoulder blades itched meditatively in its own imaginative anticipation of an
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  entering needle. What good did it do him to be proud of his brains
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  when he put himself in a spot where he walked around like a target,
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  he controlled a rising rage, But he walked. The sky was totally dark
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  now, and there were only two or three couples ahead on the slender concrete
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  span, and one old couple he had just passed so that they were between
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  himself and the follower, But that was no adequate screen. Far above sor
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  the sky taxis, and now he wanted a taxi. He was approaching a
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  place where there was a hack stand just ahead. At the midway point,
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  where the upward curve of the sidewalk leveled off and began to curve down,
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  a narrow catwalk jutted into space with a small landing platform at its end,
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  taxi. A luminescent arrow glowed at him directingly as he came abreast of it.
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  He walked roundly out along the railed catwalk, making a perfect target he
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  knew. Silhouetted against the glow, he cursed under his breath. Reaching the
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  end of it. Here he made an even more perfect target with a single
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  bright light that poured down brilliance on the bench and landing platform, spotlighting him
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  against the darkness of the night. The bench was thin iron grill work.
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  It offered no cover. He needed cover, He considered the white concrete pillar
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  of the lamp, put his hand on the railing, and jumped up to
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  sit on the railing casually, a one hundred and fifty foot fall behind him,
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  and the width of the lamp post between him and the follower, who
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  was now an unmoving figure leaning against the railing of the sidewalk near where the
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  catwalk began. The sight of the insolently lounging figure did nothing to soothe his
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  irritation. This escape was not the way he wanted to deal with a threat.
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  There was an oddity in the man's waiting. The range was poor,
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  and he probably was not firing, although he would look as if he were
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  not in any case. But if he were not going to take this chance
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  for his murder attempt, why did he openly exhibit himself, arousing suspicion and
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  cutting off further chances An innocent stroller or even a mere trailer from the detective
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  agency would have strolled on. Above came the nearing drone of a taxi which
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  had spotted him in the bright pool of light at the hackstand. There was
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  something in the careless confidence of the follower's open interest in him that raised his
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  neck care as no direct threat could have, and filled the rumble of the
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  night hidden surf with obscure menace. The man acted as if his job was
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  over Clinched, Bryce reached the answer as the taxi floated down on hissing rotor
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  blades and settled to the platform. Sliding down from the railing, he walked
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  toward its stiff legged. The light was out inside it, and the cabby
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  did not climb out or attempt to open the door for him. Bryce turned
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  his hat and looked back, as if with a last glance, at the
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  watching figure grasping the door handle with his right hand as if fumbling blindly.
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  He was left handed. When the door was open a crack, it stopped
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  opening, and those inside saw the muzzle of a magnematic in his left hand,
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  looking through the crack at them. It's easy to catch wolves if you're
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  disguised as a rabbit, pot Jack had told him once. He must have
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  looked a complete sucker starting to climb into a dark cab with his head turned
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  backward. Don't move, Bryce said, some of his anger reaching his voice
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  in a biting rasp. Inside, the driver was frozen with his head turned
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  enough to see the glint of a muzzle behind his neck, and in the
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  darkened far corner of the back seat, where there should have been no one,
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  there was the pale blur of a face and a hand holding something.
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  Bryce knew that there was no way a shot could reach him except through the
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  shielding steel door or the shatterproof window, and a man would hesitate before shooting
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  through glass. When he was looking down the throat of Bryce's gun, Bryce
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  waited for him to think it over. The hand of the man in the
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  back seat came into focus as his eyes adjusted to the darkened side, and
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  he could see that it was holding a gun. The gun was not pointing
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  at anything in particular. It was frozen in mid motion. The man had
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  a half smile frozen on his face, probably in the way he had been
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  smiling just before Bryce spoke, open your hand, drop it. The glint
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  of the gun disappeared, and there was a faint thud from the floor.
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  Bryce opened the door and slid into the rear seat. Watchful for motion,
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  ready to shoot face front. They faced front like two puppets. Perhaps the
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  uncontrollable rasp in his voice was convincing. He still did not know whose men
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  they were or why they had been hired. It would be no use questioning
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  them, for they would not know either. He could guess who it was.
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  A name came to mind, but there was no way of checking up.
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  This kind of business did not fit well with the crucial balance of his
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  plans for the next two weeks. Be careful, he said, perhaps unnecessarily,
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  I'm nervous Union Hotel. Please. The short ride to the hotel was
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  made in dead silence, with the man in the opposite corner barely moving enough
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  to blink his eyes. He was middle aged, with the resign sagging lines
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  to his face of ambition. Disappointed, but he sat with a waiting stillness
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  that Bryce recognized as something to watch. There was probably another gun within quick
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  reach of that passive right hand. The rotor drifted down to a landing space
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  on the floodlighted landing roof of the hotel and settled with a slight bump.
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  Don't move The clumsy, careful business of opening the door backward with his right
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  hand, and sliding out without taking his eyes from either of them, was
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  tediously slow. Once out, he slammed the door briskly take off. Not
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  until the red and green lights had faded into the distance did he turn away,
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  pocket his gun and walk into the wide doorway to the elevators. As
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  he brushed past the hotel detective standing in the doorway, the detective was reholstering
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  a large sized police pacifier. Apparently he had been ready to impartially stun everyone
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  concerned at the first sign of trouble, which probably explained why those in the
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  air cap had not attempted any retaliation. The detective gave Bryce a cold stare
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  as he went by, probably in disapproval of guests waving weapons on hotel premises.
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  End of chapter two read by Paul Hampton.