'FIFTEEN-MINUTE INTERSTELLAR NEWSCAST AM MARS PRESSURE
DOMES.'
Everybody leaned back and lit up. McGillicuddy's eye fell on me, and I cleared my throat
'Got a cold?' he asked genially.
'Nope. No cold.'
'Touch of indigestion? Flu, maybe? You're tardy today.'
'I know it.'
'Bright boy,' He was smiling. That was bad.
'Spencer,' he told me. 'I thought long and hard about you. I thought about you when you failed to show up for the nightside. I thought about you intermittently through the night as I took your shift. Along about 0300 I decided what to do with you. It was as though Providence had taken a hand. It was as though I prayed 'Lord, what shall I do with a drunken, no-good son of a spacecook who ranks in my opinion with the boils of Job as an affliction to man?* Here's i the answer, Spencer.'
He tossed me a piece-of ethertype paper, torn from one of our interstellar-circuit machines. On it was the following dialogue: ANYBODY TTHURE I MEAN THERE
THIS MARSBUO ISN GA PLS
WOT TTHUT I MEAN WOT THAT MEAN PLEASE
THIS IS THE MARS BUREAU OF INTERSTELLAR NEWS. WHO ARE YOU
AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING HORSING AROUND ON OUR KRUEGER
60-B CIRCUIT TELETYPE QUESTIONMARK. WHERE IS REGULAR
STAFFER. GO AHEAD
THATK WOT I AM CALLING YOU ABBOUUT. KENNEDY DIED THIS
MORNING PNEUMONIA. I AM WEEMS EDITOR PHOENIX. U SENDING
REPLLACEMENT KENNEDY PLEAS
THIS MCGILLICUDDY, MARSBUO ISN CHIEF. SENDING
REPLACEMENT KENNEDY SOONEST. HAVE IDEAL MAN FOR JOB.
END.
That was all. It was enough.
'Chief,' I said to McGillicuddy. 'Chief, you can't. You wouldn't—would you?'
'Better get packed,' he told me, busily marking up copy, 'Better take plenty of nice, warm clothing. I understand Krueger 60-B is about one thousand times dimmer than the sun. That's absolute magnitude, of course —Frostbite's in quite close. A primitive community, I'm told.
Kennedy didn't like it. But of course the poor old duffer wasn't good enough to handle anything swifter than a one-man bureau on a one-planet split. Better take lots of warm clothing.'
'I quit,' I said.
'Sam,' said somebody, in a voice that always makes me turn to custard inside.
'Hello, Ellie,' I said. 'I was just telling Mr. McGillicuddy that he isn't going to shoot me off to Frostbite to rot.'
'Freeze,' corrected McGillicuddy with relish. 'Freeze. Good morning, Miss Masters. Did you want to say a few parting words to your friend?'
'I do,' she told him, and drew me aside to no man's land where the ladies of the press prepared strange copy for the (coder sex. 'Don't quit, Sam,' she said in that voice. 'I could never love a quitter. What if it is a minor assignment?'
'Minor,' I said. ''What a gem of understatement that is!'
'It'll be good for you,' she insisted. 'You can show him that you've got on the ball. You'll be on your own except for the regular dispatches to the main circuit and your local unit. You could dig up all sorts of cute feature stories that'd get your name known.' And so on. It was partly her logic, partly that voice and partly her promise to kiss me good-by at the port.
I’M GOING TO take it,' I told McGillicuddy. He looked up with a pleased smile and murmured: 'The power of prayer …'
The good-by kiss from Ellie was the only thing about the jonmey that wasn't nightmarish. ISN's expense account stuck me on a rusty bucket that I shared with glamorous freight like yak kids and tenpenny nails.
The little yaks blatted whenever we went into overdrive to break through the speed of light. The Greenhough Effect—known to readers of the science features as 'supertime'—scared hell out of them. On ordinary rocket drive, they just groaned and whimpered to each other the yak equivalent of 'Thibet was never like this!'
The Frostbite spaceport wasn't like the South Pole, but it'd be like Greenland, There was a bunch of farmers waiting for their yaks, beating their mittened hands together and exhaling long plumes of vapor. The collector of customs, a rat-faced city boy, didn't have the decency to hand them over and let the hayseeds get back to the administration building. I watched through a porthole and saw him stalling and dawdling over a sheaf of papers for each of the farmers. Oddly enough, the stalling and dawdling stopped as soon as the farmers caught on and passed over a few dollars. Nobody even bothered to slip it shamefacedly from one hand to another. They just handed it over, not caring who saw—Rat-Face sneering, the farmers dumbly accepting the racket.
My turn came. Rat-Face came aboard and we were introduced by the chief engineer. 'Harya,' he said. 'Twenny bucks.'
'What for?'
'Landing permit. Later at the administration you can pay your visitor's permit. That's twenny, bucks too.'
'I'm not a visitor. I'm coming here to work.'
'Work, schmurk. So you'll need a work permit—twenny bucks.' His eyes wandered. 'Whaddaya got there?'
'Ethertype parts. May need them for replacements.'
He was on his knees hi front of the box, crooning, 'Triple ad valorem plus twenny dollars security bond for each part plus twenny dollars inspection fee plus twenny dollars for decontamination plus twenny dollars for failure to declare plus—'
'Break it up, Joe,' said a new arrival—a grey-mustached little man, lost in his parka. 'He's a friend of mine. Extend the courtesies of the port.'
Rat-Face—Joe—didn't like it, but he took it. He muttered about doing his duty and gave me a card.
'Twenny bucks?' I asked, studying it.
'Nah,' he said angrily. 'You're free-loading.' He got out
'Looks as if you saved ISN some money,' I said to the little man. He threw back the hood of his parka in the relative warmth of the ship.
'Why not? We'll be working together. I'm Chenery from the Phoenix.'
'Oh, yeah—the client'
'That's right,' he agreed, grinning. 'The client. What exactly did you do to get banished to Frostbite?'
Since there was probably a spacemail aboard from Mc-Gillicuddy telling him exactly what I did, I told him. 'Chief thought I was generally shiftless.'
'You'll do here,' he said. 'It's a shiftless, easy-going kind of place. I have the key to your bureau. Want me to lead the way?'
'What about my baggage?'
'Your stuff's safe. Port officers won't loot it when they know you're a friend of the Phoenix.'
That wasn't exactly what I'd meant; I'd always taken it for granted that port officers didn't loot anybody's baggage, no matter whose friends they were or weren't. As Chenery had said, it seemed to be a shiftless, easy- going place. I let him lead the way; he had a jeep watting to take us to the administration building, a musty, too- tight hodgepodge of desks.
A tot of them were vacant, and the dowdy women and fattish men at the others, didn't seem to be very busy. The women were doing then- nails or reading; the men mostly were playing blotto with pocket-size dials for small change. A couple were sleeping.
From the administration building a jet job took us the 20 kilos to-town.
Frostbite, the capital of Frostbite, housed maybe 40,000 people. No pressure dome. Just the glorious outdoors, complete with dust, weather, bisects, and a steady, icy wind. Hick towns seem to be the same the universe over.
