from a dispenser. Lit and Marda were among the several hundred Belters who did not become nudists in a shirtsleeve environment. It marked them as kooks, which was not a bad thing in the Belt.
The last door let him out behind the heat shield, still in free fall. A spring lift took him four miles down to where he could get a tricycle motor scooter. Even Belter couldn't keep a twowheeler upright against Confinement's shifting Coriolis force. The scooter took him down a steep gradient which leveled off into plowed fields, greenhouses, toiling farm machinery, woods streams and scattered cottages. In ten minutes he was home.
No, not really home. The cottage was rented from what there was of a Belt government. A Belter's home is the interior of his suit. But with Marda waiting in-side, dark and big-boned and just beginning to show her pregnancy, it felt like homecoming.
Then Lit remembered the coming fight. He hesitated a moment, consciously relaxing, before he rang.
The door disappeared, zzzip. They stood facing each other.
'Lit,' said Marda, flatly, as if there was no surprise at all. Then, 'There's a call for you.'
'I'll take care of that first.'
In the Belt as on Earth, privacy was rare and precious. The phone booth was a transparent prism, soundproof. Lit sneaked a last look at Marda before he answered the call. She looked both worried and determined.
'Hello, Cutter. What's new?'
'Hello, Lit. That's why I'm calling,' said the duty man at Ceres. Cutter's voice was colorless as always. So was his appearance. Cutter would have looked appropriate dispensing tickets or stamps from behind a barred window. 'Lars Stiller just called. One of the honeymoon specials to Titan just took off without calling us. Any comments?'
'Comments? Those stupid, bubbleheaded-' The traffic problem in space was far more than a matter of colliding spacecraft. No two spacecraft had ever collided, but men had died when their ships went through the exhaust of a fusion motor. Telescopic traffic checks, radio transmissions, rescue missions, star and asteroid observations could all be thrown out of whack by a jaywalker.
'That's what I said, Lit. What'll we do, turn 'em back?'
'Oh, Cutter, why don't you go to Earth and start your own government?' Lit rubbed his temples hard with both hands, rubbing away the tension. 'Sorry. I shouldn't have said that. Marda's having trouble, and it's bugging me. But how can we turn back thirty honeymooning flatlanders, each a multimillionaire? Things are tense enough now. Want to start the Last War?'
'I guess not. Sorry to hear about Marda. What's wrong?'
'She didn't get here in time. The baby's growing too fast.'
'That's a damn shame.'
'Yeah.'
'What about the honeymooner?'
Lit turned his thoughts away from the coming storm. 'Assign somebody to watch her and broadcast her course. Then write up a healthy bill for the service and send it to Titan Enterprises, Earth. If it isn't paid in two weeks we send a copy to the UN and demand action.'
'Figures. 'Bye, Lit.'
Conceived in free fall, gestated in free-fall for almost three months, the child was growing too fast. The question could smash a marriage: Let the 'doc abort now? Or wait, slow the child's growth with the appropriate hormone injections, and hope that it wouldn't be born a monster?
But there was no such hope.
Lit felt like he was drowning. With a terrible effort he kept his voice gentle. 'There'll be other children, Marda.'
'But will there? It's so risky, hoping I can get to Confinement before it's too late. Oh, Lit, let's wait until we're
She'd waited three months between 'doc checks! But Lit couldn't say so now, or ever. Instead he said, 'Marda, the autodoc is sure, and Dr. Siropopolous is sure. I'll tell you what I've been thinking, We could take a house right here in Confinement until you're pregnant again. It's been done before. Granted it's expensive-' The phone rang.
'Yes?' he barked. 'Cutter, what's wrong now-'
'Two things. Brace yourself.'
'Go ahead.'
'One. The honeymooner is not going to Titan. It seems to be headed in the direction of Neptune.'
'But- Better give me the rest of it.'
'A military ship just took off from Topeka Base. It's chasing the honeymooner, and they didn't call us this time either!'
'That's more than peculiar. How long is the honeymooner on its way?'
'An hour and a half. No turnover yet, but of course it could be headed for any number of asteroids.'
'Oh, that's just great.' Lit closed his eyes for a moment. 'It almost sounds like something's wrong with the honeymooner, and the other ship's trying a rescue mission. Could something have blown in the lifesupport system?'
'I'd guess not, not in the Golden Circle. Honeymooners have fail-safe on their fail-safe. But you'd better hear the punch line.'
'Fire.'
'The military ship took off from the field on its fusion drive.'
'Then-' There was only one conceivable answer. Lit began to laugh. 'Somebody stole it!'
Cutter smiled thinly. 'Exactly. Once again, shall we turn either of them back?'
'Certainly not. For one thing, if we threaten to shoot we may have to do it. For another, Earth is very touchy about what rights they have in space. For a third, this is their problem, and their ships. For a fourth, I want to see what happens. Don't you get it yet, Cutter?'
'My guess is that both ships have been stolen.' Cutter was still smiling.
'No, no. Too improbable. The military ship was stolen, but the honeymooner must have been sabotaged. We're about to witness the first case of space piracy!'
'O-o-oh. Fifteen couples, and all their jewels, plus, uh,
ransom you know, I believe you're right!' And Lit Shaeffer was the first man in years to hear Cutter laugh in public.
In the dead of August the Kansas countryside was a steam bath with sunlamps. Under the city's temperature umbrella it was a cool, somewhat breezy autumn, but the air hit Luke Garner like the breath of Hell as his chair shot through the intangible barrier between Cool and Hot. From there he traveled at top speed, not much caring if his chair broke down as long as he could get into an air conditioned hospital.
He stopped at the spaceport checkpoint, was cleared immediately, and crossed the concrete like a ram on a catapult. The hospital stood like a wedge of Swiss cheese at the edge of the vast landing field, its sharp corner pointed inward. He got inside before heat stroke could claim him.
The line before the elevator was discouragingly long. His chair was rather bulky; he would need an elevator almost to himself. And people were no longer over-polite to their elders. There were too many elders around these days. Garner inhaled deeply of cool air, then went back out.
Outside the doors he fumbled in the ashtray on the left arm of his chair. The motor's purr rose to a howl, and suddenly it wasn't a ground-effect motor any more.
If Masney could see him now! Six years ago Masney had profanely ordered him to get rid of the illegal power booster or be run in for using a manually operated flying vehicle. Anything for a friend, Luke had reasoned, and bad hidden the control in the ashtray.
The ground dwindled. The edge of the building shot downward past him: sixty stories of it. Now he could see the scars left by Greenberg and Masney. The wavering fusion flame had splashed molten concrete in all directions, had left large craters and intricate earthworm-track runnels, had crossed the entrance to a passenger tunnel and left molten metal pouring down the stairs. Men and machines were at work cleaning up the mess.
The sun deck was below him. Luke brought the travel chair down on the roof and scooted past startled
