Satellite System, H. B. Fyfe [best historical fiction books of all time .TXT] 📗

aving released the netting of his bunk, George Tremont floated himself out. He ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced.

"Wonder how long I slept ... feels like too long," he muttered. "Well, they would have called me."

The "cabin" was a ninety-degree wedge of a cylinder hardly eight feet high. From one end of its outer arc across to the other was just over ten feet, so that it had been necessary to bevel two corners of the hinged, three-by-seven bunk to clear the sides of the wedge. Lockers flattened the arc behind the bunk.

Tremont maneuvered himself into a vertical position in the eighteen inches between the bunk and a flat surface that cut off the point of the wedge. He stretched out an arm to remove towel and razor from one of the lockers, then carefully folded the bunk upward and hooked it securely in place.

With room to turn now, he swung around and slid open a double door in the flat surface, revealing a shaft three feet square whose center was also the theoretical intersection of his cabin walls. Tremont pulled himself into the shaft. From "up" forward, light leaked through a partly open hatch, and he could hear a murmur of voices as he jackknifed in the opposite direction.

"At least two of them are up there," he grunted.

He wondered which of the other three cabins was occupied, meanwhile pulling himself along by the ladder rungs welded to one corner of the shaft. He reached a slightly wider section aft, which boasted entrances to two air locks, a spacesuit locker, a galley, and a head. He entered the last, noting the murmur of air-conditioning machinery on the other side of the bulkhead.

Tremont hooked a foot under a toehold to maintain his position facing a mirror. He plugged in his razor, turned on the exhauster in the slot below the mirror to keep the clippings out of his eyes, and began to shave. As the beard disappeared, he considered the deals he had come to Centauri to put through.

"A funny business!" he told his image. "Dealing in ideas! Can you really sell a man's thoughts?"

Beginning to work around his chin, he decided that it actually was practical. Ideas, in fact, were almost the only kind of import worth bringing from Sol to Alpha Centauri. Large-scale shipments of necessities were handled by the Federated Governments. To carry even precious or power metals to Earth or to return with any type of manufactured luxury was simply too expensive in money, fuel, effort, and time.

On the other hand, traveling back every five years to buy up plans and licenses for the latest inventions or processes—that was profitable enough to provide a good living for many a man in Tremont's business. All he needed were a number of reliable contacts and a good knowledge of the needs of the three planets and four satellites colonized in the Centaurian system.

Only three days earlier, Tremont had returned from his most recent trip to the old star, landing from the great interstellar ship on the outer moon of Centauri VII. There he leased this small rocket—the Annabel, registered more officially as the AC7-4-525—for his local traveling. It would be another five days before he reached the inhabited moons of Centauri VI.

He stopped next in the galley for a quick breakfast out of tubes, regretting the greater convenience of the starship, then returned the towel and razor to his cabin. He decided that his slightly rumpled shirt and slacks of utilitarian gray would do for another day. About thirty-eight, an inch or two less than six feet and muscularly slim, Tremont had an air of habitual neatness. His dark hair, thinning at the temples, was clipped short and brushed straight back. There were smile wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes and grooving his lean cheeks.

He closed the cabin doors and pulled himself forward to enter the control room through the partly open hatch. The forward bulkhead offered no more head room than did his own cabin, but there seemed to be more breathing space because this chamber was not quartered. Deck space, however, was at such a premium because of the controls, acceleration couches, and astrogating equipment that the hatch was the largest clear area.

Two men and a girl turned startled eyes upon Tremont as he rose into their view. One of the men, about forty-five but sporting a youngish manner to match his blond crewcut and tanned features, glanced quickly at his wrist watch.

"Am I too early?" demanded Tremont with sudden coldness. "What are you doing with my case there?"

The girl, in her early twenties and carefully pretty with her long black hair neatly netted for space, snatched back a small hand from the steel strongbox that was shaped to fit into an attaché case. The second man, under thirty but thick-waisted in a gray tee-shirt, said in the next breath, "Take him!"

Too late, Tremont saw that the speaker had already braced a foot against the far bulkhead. Then the broad face with its crooked blob of a nose above a ridiculous little mustache shot across the chamber at him. Desperately, Tremont groped for a hold that would help him either to avoid the charge or to pull himself back into the shaft, but he was caught half in and half out.

He met the rush with a fist, but the tangle of bodies immediately became confusing beyond belief as the other pair joined in.

Something cracked across the back of his head, much too hard to have been accidental.

When Tremont began to function again, it took him only a few seconds to realize that life had been going on without him for some little time.

For one thing, the heavy man's nosebleed had stopped, and he was tenderly combing blood from his mustache with a fingertip.

For another, they had managed to stuff Tremont into a spacesuit and haul him down the shaft to the air lock. Someone had noosed the thumbs of the gauntlets together and tied the cord to the harness supporting the air tanks.

Tremont twisted his head around to eye the three of them without speaking. He was trying to decide where he had made his mistake.

Bill Braigh, the elderly youth with the crewcut? Ralph Peters, the pilot who had come with the ship? Dorothy Stauber, the trim brunette who had made the trip from Earth on the same starship as Tremont? He could not make up his mind without more to go on.

Then he remembered with a sinking sensation that all of them had been clustered about his case of papers and microfilms when he had interrupted them.

"I trust you aren't thinking of making us any trouble, Tremont," drawled Braigh. "Give up the idea; you've been no trouble at all."

"Where do you think this is getting you?" demanded Tremont.

Braigh chuckled.

"Wherever it would have gotten you," he said. "Only at less expense."

"Ask him for the combination," growled Peters.

Braigh scrutinized Tremont's expression.

"It would probably take us a while, Ralph," he decided regretfully. "It's simpler to put him outside now and be free to use tools on the box."

Tremont opened his mouth to protest, but Braigh clapped the helmet over his head and screwed it fast.

"You'll never read the code!" yelled Tremont, struggling to break free. "Those papers are no good to you without me!"

Someone slammed him against the bulkhead and held him there with his face to it. He could do nothing with his hands, joined as they were, and very little with his feet. It dawned upon him that they could not hear a word, and he fell silent. Twisting his head to peer out the side curve of his vision band, he caught a glimpse of Peters suiting up.

A few minutes later, they opened the inner hatch of the air lock and shoved Tremont inside. Peters followed, gripping him firmly about the knees from behind.

"Here we go!" grunted Peters, and Tremont realized that he could communicate again, over their suit radios.

"You won't get far, trying to read the code I have those papers written in," he warned. "You'd better talk this over before you make a mistake."

"Ain't no mistake about it," said Peters, pressing toward the outer hatch. "So you chartered the rocket. You felt you oughta go out to see about a heavy dust particle hitting the hull. You fell off an' we never found you."

"How will you explain not going yourself? Or not finding me by instruments?"

Peters clubbed Tremont's foot from the tank rack he had hooked with the toe.

"How could I go? Leave the ship without a pilot? An' the screens are for pickin' up meteorites far enough out to mean somethin' at the speeds they travel. So you were too close to register, leastways till it was way too late. You must have suffocated when your air ran out."

Tremont scrabbled about with his feet for some kind of hold. The outer hatch began to open. He could see stars out there.

"Wait!" shouted Tremont.

It was too late. He felt himself shoot forward as if Peters had thrust a foot into the small of his back and shoved. Tremont tried to grab at the edge of the air lock, but it was gone. A puff of air frosted about him, its human bullet.

The stars spun slowly before his eyes. After a moment, the gleaming hull of the Annabel swam into his field of view. It was already thirty feet away and the air lock was closing. He caught a glimpse of a spacesuited figure with the light behind it.

Then he was looking at the stars again.

The small, distant brilliance of Alpha Centauri made him squint in the split second before the suit's photoelectric cells caused filters to flip down before his eyes. Then it was stars again, and the filters retracted.

"They can't do this!" said Tremont. "Peters! Do you hear me? You can't get away with this!"

There was no answer.

The rocket came into view again, farther away. He had to get back somehow. Forgetting the bound position of his hands, he attempted to check his belt equipment. Holding his arms as far as possible from his body was not enough to let him get a look at the harness from within his helmet.

He tugged violently at the cord holding the thumbs of his gauntlets, and thought it gave slightly.

Maybe it just tightened, he thought.

To free his hands, he drew his arms in through the wide armpits of the suit sleeves, built that way to enable the wearer to feed himself, wipe his brow, or adjust clothing or heating units within the suit. He felt more comfortable but that got him nowhere except for the chance to consult his wrist watch.

Set at the lunar time of Centauri VII-4, it told him that when he had gone out of the airlock five minutes before the time had been 17:36. It did not strike Tremont as being a very promising bit of data—warning him merely that when he began to feel the want of air, it would be about 21:30. He longed for a pen-knife.

"There's one thing I'm going to ask about on my next trip to Sol—if I make one!" he muttered. "Has anyone developed a reliable, small suit air lock, so you can pass things out from your pockets?"

He thrust his hands once more into the arms of the suit, and felt as far along his belt as he could. He did manage to reach the usual position of the standard rocket pistol. The hook was empty.

"Well, that's that!" he groaned. "They didn't forget. I have nothing to maneuver with."

He pondered worriedly. Perhaps the air—if he dared to waste any, it would make a small jet. Slow, but he had all the rest of his life!

He settled down to picking at the cord about his thumbs with the tips of the other fingers in his gauntlets. It seemed possible that he might in time chew it up to the point where it could be snapped.

The stars streamed slowly past his line of vision as he spun through the emptiness. Two or three little bits of the cord chipped off and drifted away. Tremont realized that it was frozen and brittle. He redoubled his efforts. After a few minutes of clumsy clicking of fingertips