Round-and-Round Trip, H. B. Fyfe [best e book reader android .TXT] 📗

Finally, with the half dozen who also would be traveling onward, Winstead was off to the hotel and a day's rest.

As a matter of fact, it was three days' rest, before he was summoned. He was, perhaps by intent, confronted upon his arrival by a different clerk, a solid, square-faced girl. Winstead's nervous questions were reflected unanswered from a shield of impervious calm. He received all the information the Agency seemed to feel was good for him and was sent out with a personal guide.

The guide delivered him to a thick thing named the Stellar Streak, clearly a workhorse freighter. Somehow, it never did become plain to Winstead until after he had emerged from his acceleration net that the destination was Topaz IV.

"But, Captain!" he protested. "Are you sure the people at the spaceport have not made some mistake? That is more or less the direction I came from."

The pilot stared impatiently at the papers thrust under his nose.

"Can't say, sir. We have our work cut out just to take the ship to where they tell us. Only reason we carry passengers is that regulations require cooperation with the Agency. Don't believe in it myself."

Mr. Winstead sighed and returned to his quarters. At least, on this ship, he still had a private compartment in which to float his net. There was even a chair, equipped with a safety belt and folding table, bolted to the deck. What he did miss was the general dining saloon of the liner he had taken from Epseri II.

Still, he reflected, travel can't always be luxurious.

He spent some time, after the ship had slipped into stellar drive, in unpacking his one small suitcase. He found that he had to take his shaver to the general head to plug it in, but otherwise got along comfortably enough. One or two of the crew who shared his turn at the galley counter, in fact, took him for an old space hopper and began to exchange yarns.

This sort of semi-suspended living passed the four-day hop to the Topaz system and the extra day necessary for planetary approach. When they landed, Winstead was the only passenger, either incoming or outgoing, to show up at the cargo shed designated as the spaceport administration building.

Here on Topaz IV, the Agency clerk was a part-time man who had to be called from the mines on the far side of the city. He arrived to find Winstead dozing on a cot at the end of the shed.

"Billy Callahan," he introduced himself. "They say you're not for the mines."

"That is correct," answered Winstead, stretching a kink out of his back. "I have my destination here in these papers ... if you will bear with me a moment...."

He fumbled out his identification, travel record, and ticket. Callahan, rubbing his carroty hair with a large, freckled hand, pored over them. A few minutes of searching through the battered desk that was his headquarters revealed the official arrival stamp. Its inky smear was duly added to the record.

"Now for your way outa here," grunted Callahan. "Meanwhile, how about a cigar, Mr. Winstead?"

"Why—thanks very much."

Winstead regarded the torpedo doubtfully. He wondered upon which planet the tobacco for it—if it was tobacco—had been grown.

"This might take a little while," said Callahan, applying to the ends of their cigars a lighter that could have welded I-beams. "It ain't every day we get a through traveler here. I gotta look up the Galatlas an' the shipping notices."

He hoisted a bulky catalogue from a side table onto his desk and blew off a cloud of dust. Winstead seized the excuse to cough out a lungful of smoke. His host reached out for the ticket.

"Ultimate destination Fomalhaut VIII," he read off. "Say! That ain't one I ever had to handle before!"

He leafed through the volume for some minutes, reexamined the ticket, then dug into two or three appendices. He tapped a knobby knuckle against his chin.

"It don't look to me, Mr. Winstead," he said thoughtfully, "like you shoulda wound up here at all. Fomalhaut VIII! That's a hell of a way from here!"

"The clerk at the last spaceport did seem to think there had been a mistake," Winstead volunteered cautiously.

"Somethin' sure slipped. Maybe some jet-head read his directions wrong an' sent you so many degrees Sol north instead of Sol south. Best you can say is you're still on the right general side of the Solar System."

"Oh, dear!" Winstead said, flustered. "What can you do about that?"

"Depends what ships, if any, are due here. If I was you, I'd take the first one out. Get to a bigger settlement, where you'll get a better choice of ships."

He flicked ash from his cigar and inquired whether Winstead had retained quarters aboard the Stellar Streak. He was undaunted by the negative reply.

"Never mind," he said heartily. "We're too small to have an Agency hotel here, but I'll fix you up a place to stay in town."

They left Winstead's bag under the desk and set off by dilapidated groundcar for Topaz City. This turned out to be a crude, sprawling village of adobe walls and corrugated plastic roofs. The varied colors of the roofs contrasted in desperate gaiety with the dun walls. As soon as Callahan skidded to a halt, the car was enveloped by its own dust cloud.

"Phew!" coughed Callahan. "Some day they're gonna have to pave the street!"

Winstead pulled out a handkerchief to mop his tear-flooded eyes. His thin chest heaved and he spat out muddy saliva.

"I'm sorry about that," apologized Callahan. "Tell you what—we don't have much civilization yet, but we do have a little cocktail lounge. Come along an' I'll get you somethin' to clear your throat."

The traveler allowed himself to be helped out of the car and guided along the "street" to a low building marked by a small parking jam. Most of the men and women that passed them on the way shouted out a greeting to his companion. They dressed with little distinction between the sexes in rough shirts, boots, and pants of a narrower pattern than Winstead's conservative suit. He was introduced to six or seven people he never expected to lay eyes upon again.

Frontier culture, he deduced. Where humans are rare, each one counts for more.

The first thing he saw in the lounge was the girl guitarist. She was the only woman he had yet seen who was not wearing pants. In fact, it had hardly occurred to him that there might be someone in town who was not connected with the mines. This girl was hardly connected to her own brief costume.

The second thing he saw was a wall of friendly, weather-beaten faces, turning his way in response to Callahan's cheerful whoop. The third was a man-size drink somebody thrust at him.

After listening for quite a while to a repertoire of apparently ribald songs, most of them too local in humor for Winstead to follow, the traveler was led by Callahan to a sort of restaurant just down the street.

Winstead thought later that he had eaten something there, but what it might have been he forgot as soon as they returned to the cocktail lounge, for a bottle-swinging brawl broke out almost immediately in a far corner. After a form of order had been restored, there was a girl who danced; and presently Callahan was shaking him up and down on a spine-stiffening bed in a small, darkened room.

Winstead promptly discovered that he had, indeed, eaten. When he recovered, he followed Callahan out on wobbly legs to seek a remedy. It was a bright, sunny day, but he could not even guess at the local time. A little while after they had been successful in finding the remedy, he forgot about it.

"Take care of Bobby Winstead for me a little while, George," he heard Callahan say to someone. "I gotta stop out at the port to check a ship for him. Be right back."

The hospitality shown him shamed Winstead into inquiring where he might cash a traveler's check. With the proceeds, he was permitted to buy about one round in a dozen, and to join in the singing. He was eagerly pumped between stops along the street for the latest news of Terra. His least little knowledge was of interest to