2 An Unexpected Rival
The owner, manager and founder of Leigh Salvage, Incorporated, was only human. In turn he visited the offices of the other salvage companies and said, in effect, 'Ya-a-ah!' Or that was the plan.
Burke was first on his list: a sullen, red-headed man with a grudge against everybody. He threw Jerry out of his office before half the 'Ya-a-ah' was out. The captain was too happy at the moment to start or finish a fight, so he brushed himself off for a call on Rusty Adams, of the Bluebell Salvage Company.
He entered their office and what appeared to be a secretary or receptionist or something said to him, 'Can I help you?'
'Yes,' he said absently, looking for Adams. 'What are you doing tonight?' She scowled prettily. He noticed her hair, blonde. He noticed her eyes, blue-grey. He noticed, moreover, her face and figure, very neat—but this was business. 'Is the proprietor of this ramshackle space-tuggery in?'
'Yes,' she said, 'the proprietor is in.'
'Then drag the old dog out; I would have words with him.'
'I,' she said, 'am the proprietor.'
Jerry smiled gently. 'Enough of this,' he said. 'I refer to the illustrious Francis X. Adams, alias the Rusty Nut, alias the Creaking Screw—'
He paused. Her eyes were full of tears. She looked up. 'He was my father,' she said, 'You're Leigh, aren't you? They told me of your ways.
Father died while you were in space. I've come from Earth to take care of his business.' She blew her nose on a silly little handkerchief, and said, 'If there's anything I can do for you—'
Jerry felt lower than a snake's belly. He stammered an apology of some sort and went on, 'As a matter of fact I did have a deal to talk over. I want to buy out your concern.' As a matter of fact he had wanted to do nothing of the sort, but he thought it out quickly. The expense would cripple him for a while, but he'd be able to dispose of the Bluebell at a loss and get some operating capital, and one more job like that Argol and he'd be right back where he was now with only a little time wasted and she did have blue-grey eyes and what did a woman know about salvage anyway—
'Not for sale, Mr. Leigh,' she said coolly.
That shocked him—he had thought that he was doing her a favor. He decided to be a big brother. 'Miss Adams, I think you ought to accept.
Not for my sake, but for yours. You have had no experience at the work; you'll be at the mercy of your employees, and salvage men are the toughest mob in space. Your father could handle the company, but—'
She set her pretty jaw. 'Just that,' she said. 'My father could handle them and so can I.'
What was a man to do in the face of such madness? Perhaps—'What about a shipmaster, Miss Adams? Your profits will all run into his salary.'
'No, Mr. Leigh—my father did it and I can do it. I'm going to pilot my own ship.'
With that he exploded—no woman had ever piloted a rocket ship, he said; and also he said that no woman ever would pilot a rocket ship, and that if she thought she was going to learn to pilot a ship she was just plain crazy to try and learn on a salvage scow; and further he said that the salvage scow is notorious throughout all space as the crankiest, most perverted, perverse and persnickety brand of vessel that flies; that to run a scow you had to be born in the space-lanes and weaned on rocket-juice-
'I don't know about the rocket-juice,' she said, 'but I was born on the Jupiter-Earth liner.' Jerry gasped for breath.
'Is there anything else?' she said. 'Because if there isn't I'd like to get some work done on my father's accounts.'
'No,' said Jerry thickly. He was dangerously near apoplexy. 'Nothing else.' And he walked out of the office muttering, 'Accounts …get some work done on my father's …' Dammit! A woman couldn't fly a scow, and she wouldn't believe that very obvious fact until she was smeared over half of the landing field.
Like a man in a dream he found himself at the offices of the Salvage Field Commission, paying his field dues. An official, dazed, asked if anything was wrong. Did he expect to die, or something?
'No,' said Jerry thickly, 'but I expect to get potted in about twenty-five minutes. Would you mind coming along?'
'Not at all,' said the official. In fact he felt the need of a drink after having beheld the ungodly spectacle of the Leigh Salvage Company paying up on time.
Many hours later all that was left of the two was a very small noise in the corner of a saloon on Broadway, at the corner of Le Bourse. Half of the small—very small—noise was saying to the other half at intervals,
'Wimmin can't never fly …Wimmin can' never fly …Wimmin can' never fly …' And the second half of the very small noise was replying to the first, ' Yeh …they cer'nly don't …' At length the proprietor told a hackie to please take them away, and what happened to the official nobody ever found out, but Jerry awoke next morning in his hotel room with a pair of blue eyes wavering in front of his face. They weren't real, though—vanished with the first draught of bicarb.
His phone rang, and he winced. It was the Salvage Field Commission, and they wanted to know what he had done with Sweeny. Sweeny? Oh, yeah—no; he didn't remember a thing. To hell with Sweeny. Were there any jobs to be done? He wanted to get off Mars before he got drunk again. There was a long pause while the commission looked up today's sheet. Yes—one bullion ship wrecked between Mercury and Venus.
Carrying iridium. Speed was essential; therefore the agreement was on a strictly competitive basis; any or all salvage companies registered could try for it simultaneously. The owner of the ship agreed to buy back the cargo falling to the salvager at market quotations out of hand.
First scow to get a grapple on, had her. Laufer and Burke had filed intention claims, and were starting off in a couple of hours; so had Bluebell.
'Who? What master?'
'Er …Adams. Holy smokes! Alice Adams!'
Jerry swore. 'You'll have to stop that kid. She doesn't know how to fly.'
'You'd better come down, then. You seem to know more about this mess than I do. Hurry up if you want a crack at the Carpathia—that's the bullion ship.'
'Expect me in twenty minutes or less.' Hastily he dressed, his hangover forgotten, muttering to himself things about slap-happy blondes.
Schopenhauer, he decided, had approximately the right idea.
For the second or third time in his life he was not late for an appointment; twenty minutes saw him bursting through to the office of the commissioner.
'Well?' he demanded violently. 'Are you going to let her fly? In a race like this is going to be, she'll not only smash up herself and her crew but any of the rest of us who get in what she seems to think is her way.'
The body wrapped around the telephone voice answered heavily,
'There's nothing to be done about it. For some obscure reason the 'sons or other issue of the deceased licensee shall retain the towage and salvage permits of the deceased, and all appurtenances thereof,'
according to regulations.
'The license for towage, etc., includes an operator's card; therefore we discovered that a crack-brained female who has never flown before inherits a flying permit without physical examination or experience.
I'm going to write my congressman; that seems to be all that anyone can do about it just now. Shall I fill out an intention for you on that Carpathia?'
'Yeah. I won't be back,' he snapped, half way through the door.
He found Sven in a cheap rooming-house near the port.
'You round up the rest of the crew!' he yelled, 'and be at the field by twelve noon or you're all fired and busted.' He tore away and jumped into a taxi. 'To the salvage field, buddy, in a helluva rush!'
He was oiling the space lock when the others arrived, led by Big Sven.
He stared at them. 'Often,' he said, 'I have wondered what happens to space lice when they crawl off the ship. I now perceive that I should have known.' Each and every man of them had at least one black eye; each had cuts and bruises about the temples. 'Well—forget the good times. There's iridium drifting free between Mercury and Venus, and we're going to snag it. And if we don't sink our grapples into that hulk before any other space-tramp, you worms go hungry. Clear? Now get to stations; in ninety seconds we take off. I said ninety!'
