Island Worlds (10 page)

"You're a cautious man. Payment is to this account in Panama." He took out a pad of self-destruct paper, good for twenty-four hours, and wrote out a long number with a stylus. "Make the transfer as soon as you get back to your quarters. This number becomes nonfunctional at the end of the next shift." The intricately-coded numbers used for international gold transfers were untraceable even by the most sophisticated government computers. If Shaw should disappear with the advance, Thor could absorb the loss. Instinct told him that Shaw could be trusted, though. With matters of price settled, they ordered another round and sat back. Thor noticed two men who were not drinking sitting at a nearby table. One was a thin, saturnine man with close-cropped hair and beard. The other was a villainous-looking redhead with a scarred face. Watchdogs.

"For the next few days," Shaw said, "I'll be setting up the operation. Keep up your spelunking. It's good training for the island worlds and that's how we'll engineer your disappearance. We lose a few every year, out caving."

"That's about how I figured it," Thor said. "I'll leave the details up to you."

"You know, Taggart, you have a famous name, but it won't cut any ice out in the Belt. I know more Taggarts, Cianos, Kurodas, Tarkovskys and such than you do. It takes more than a name, out there."

"Not to mention that you don't have much use for rich kids who decide to skin out for cushy jobs in the Belt because they're bored on Earth."

Shaw smiled very slightly. "That, too. They do come in handy as paying customers, though. And in any case, you'll find that cushy jobs are hard to come by out there."

"That suits me. I intend to make my own way. I'm good at what I do and I'm not going to waste my life as a jumped-up bureaucrat for some Earth agency."

"That's good," Shaw said, approval in his manner for the first time. "Maybe young Chih' Chin wasn't wrong about you, after all. He says you spotted some things in your media scan that he'd missed."

"There are still a lot of holes in it," Thor admitted, "but I think we can crack the problem."

"I hadn't been keeping up with the Earth media lately. That's an oversight in an old radical publisher, I admit. I've been more action oriented lately. I think I can clear up one or two things, though, especially about McNaughton." The way he pronounced the name bespoke little affection for the clan.

"That's been the major mystery," Thor said. "Why are they torpedoing their own operation?"

"We'll have plenty of time to talk about it," Shaw said. "We have a long trip ahead of us. Right now, I have other matters to attend to." He glanced at his watch. "Just do your caving, be visible, do all the usual tourist stuff. I'll be in contact in a few days."

As Shaw was leaving Thor called, "Mr. Shaw."

He turned. "Yes?"

"Tell me something: Is it possible to pick a direction and throw a rock around here without hitting a Fu?"

"There isn't a bookmaker on Luna who'd give you odds," Shaw said. As he left, the two watchdogs got up and followed. No employee of the Earthlight Room paid the slightest attention. Shaw might as well have been invisible.

FIVE

"He's a dangerous man," Moore said. Now that Thor had actually met Shaw, people were a little freer in talking about him, but not much. Like any other small, tight community, Armstrong thrived on gossip, and within twenty-four hours of his interview with Shaw, everyone in the nonofficial culture seemed to know about it. The Sálamid officer had left his recruiting duties for the afternoon and they toured the little museum next to the casino.

"What other kind of man would take up his occupation?" Thor asked. He stopped before a holograph of Sam and Laine Taggart's tombsite. The recorded narration droned on about the freak meteoroid strike of 36, in which they had died.

"Don't get me wrong," Moore said. "Smuggling and immigrant-running are respectable occupations out in the Belt. But Shaw is more than that. He's a revolutionary, and when an independence movement really gets going out here, I expect him to be in the middle of it."

"Chih' Chin said that he'd been involved in revolutionary activities back on Earth, underground publishing, bomb-planting, that sort of thing. I'd think that's just the kind of man who'll be needed when the colonies finally decide to make the break."

"He's the wrong kind," Moore said. "Nothing wrong with his spirit, and I don't know what his ideals are, but I've dealt with him a few times and I know what his tactics will be. Terrorism. He'd never spend years in tedious organizing and building up a viable economic-military base when setting off a few bombs might do the trick. It's the kind of thing that brings about massive retaliation."

"It sounds as if you Sálamids have been studying the problem," Thor observed.

"Scenario construction is a large part of military staff work in peacetime," Moore said. "If you don't work out contingencies and continually update them with new data, you foster stagnant thinking and you're caught flatfooted when the action starts. Mr. Shaw figures prominently in our projections." He paused, carefully considering his words. "You might, too."

Thor looked up from the holo, surprised. "What do you mean?"

"It's coming fast, Thor. The independence movement, I mean. They're dreadfully disorganized out there. You'll have to see it to believe it. Someone has to pull those people together and it shouldn't be left to the likes of Martin Shaw. A young man like you, from one of the first families of space settlement, could make a real difference."

Thor shook his head. "I'm going out there to work, not to play politics. But what about you Sálamids? I'd think if there's going to be action you'd be in on it."

This time it was Moore's turn to shake his head. "We're pledged to wait for a constitutional government to represent the bulk of the settlers, then we'll put ourselves under its orders. Anything else leads to military government, which is bad for the governed and ruins the military."

"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere for your Washington or Lenin or whatever." Moore nodded sorrowfully, but when Thor's back was turned he smiled.

Caving helped keep Thor in top condition. Moving around on the Moon only looked easy to Earthies. Each day he chose a more distant, remote cave to explore. He wanted that on the record. When he wasn't caving, he spent a lot of time in the one-gee gym, where Earthies could keep their bodies in shape for a return to full gravity. Thor had no intention of returning, but he knew that, at the best of times, life in the island worlds involved hard work and great physical hardship.

He was rapidly getting bored. He had been here almost a month, and even lunar caving and exploring could lose its charms. If he had been involved in one of the new development projects it might have been different, but he was just a glorified tourist. He returned from his latest caving expedition to find Porthos and Aramis tussling on his bed and a message light on the holoscreen. He tossed the cats out onto the terrace and keyed the message. He was rewarded with an intricate series of numbers, belonging to no code he had seen used locally. Excitedly, he keyed it in. After a few moments, Martin Shaw appeared. "It's about time you got back," he said, irritably.

"It's about time you got in contact," Thor answered. After all, it was his two million in gold.

"Be ready for departure tomorrow afternoon."

"Tomorrow!" Thor said, both excited and outraged. "That doesn't give me much time."

"Tough," Shaw said unsympathetically. "Things are getting tight around here and we have to move fast. Tomorrow morning you'll go caving. Here's your grid coordinates." The screen flashed an eight-digit number and Thor copied it down. "The cave you're going to explore is designated A-7 in that grid square. It's been visited a few times, so the dust is disturbed enough to confuse things. Bring along as much as you can carry in your kit bag. Anything else just leave in your room. We'll get it to you later."

"What do I do when I get to the cave?"

"You'll be met there. Just follow instructions and it'll look like you went in and never came out."

This was it. This was the final break. After he took this step, he would be a criminal, by Earth anti-space emigration laws. "I'll be there," Thor said.

"Going out again today, Mr. Taggart?" The attendant was polishing a helmet which didn't need it. "You're the most enthusiastic explorer we've had through here in a long time." He gestured at the near-empty airlock facility. Over in a corner, a small geology class was suiting up under the supervision of their professor.

"If I'd wanted to stick to indoor activities I'd have stayed on earth." Thor was already suited up except for his helmet, his bulging kit bag slung across his back.

"You planning a longer trip than usual?" the attendant asked, eying the bag.

"I may stay out for a few days this time. I've been building up my endurance, you know. I'm tired of getting out to my site then having to turn around and head back after just a couple of hours underground."

The attendant looked doubtful. "I wouldn't advise it, not alone. Fatigue can catch you from behind and you can lose track of time easy."

"I can handle it," Thor said, confidently.

The man shrugged. "It's your neck. Okay, if you'll come over here, we'll get you checked out." They crossed to the parking area and the attendant slapped the dust shield of a moonbuggy. "I'm giving you the same one you had yesterday, D-17. She's fully fueled and you have oxy tanks, rations and water for a week. Your distress signal's been checked out and everything's in working order. Sign here, please." While Thor signed the sheet on the clipboard, the attendant made entries in the logbook that stayed with the buggy.

Thor climbed in and disengaged the brake. Slowly, he rolled the spindly vehicle into the airlock and waved at the attendant as the hatch closed behind him. He dogged down his helmet and his respirator engaged automatically. When he was satisfied that everything was in order, he got out of the buggy and pressed the wall switch, holding it down as the air was pumped from the lock. He felt his suit inflate slightly as the exterior pressure dropped. Slowly, the door opened. He continued to press the wall-switch. Had his hand dropped from the switch, the door would have shut immediately and the chamber would have repressurized. It was an old safety precaution.

The hatch was fully opened and he remounted. On its oversized, metal-mesh tires, the buggy rolled out onto the lunar surface. No matter how many times he did this, it was always a thrill. He wondered if deep space would have anything to match it. Here near the settlement, decades of traffic had cleared away most of the dust, but it began to fly as soon as he was a half-kilometer away, the plumes thrown up by his mesh tires falling back almost vertically with no supporting air. He always had an urge to floor it as he had with his old Porsche, but he restrained himself. Now was no time for a real accident, when he was engineering a fake one.

The flatscreen map in front of him gave his current position as well as his destination, laid out neatly in map grid form. He rotated the flat image ninety degrees and was given a three-dimensional schematic of the terrain ahead. His path wound between the abrupt, uneroded cliffs and rock formations which characterized so much of the lunar surface. The eerie silence gave the journey a deceptive monotony, and Thor knew that he had to keep alert every moment. As the attendant had said, there were a lot of ways to die out here. The airless environment was utterly unforgiving.

From time to time, he crossed over lines of footprints or the tracks of surface vehicles. Here and there, the radiating lines of a spacecraft takeoff or landing scarred the terrain. The marks might have been left days, years or decades before. The dust of Luna could lie undisturbed for centuries.

Four hours of travel brought him to the cave designated A-7. He checked the holographic image against the cave before him to make sure. He'd feel awfully silly if he ended up going into A-6 by mistake. Nope, this was the one. He drove up to the entrance and saw that there was a scattering of tracks and footprints, attesting to the few mapping expeditions that had come to this remote spot.

Carefully, he went through the normal routine he would have followed had this been an ordinary outing. He dismounted from the buggy and removed the air tank he had been using. He replaced it in its rack and took a fresh tank and clipped it on. He took three packs of semi-liquid rations, as if he intended to spend a full shift inside. Each tank was good for that much air. He made sure that the buggy was parked well in the open, so that it could be easily spotted from above, then he picked up his kit bag and walked to the cave entrance.

When he was about twenty meters away from the entrance, he noticed the rope dangling down the cliff face and hanging into the entrance, just clear of the floor. He looked up and saw a suited figure at the top of the cliff. A voice, not Shaw's, came over his helmet speaker.

"Just walk on in, just like you would for a regular trip. As you pass, grab hold of the rope and go inside with it, past the dust. Clip the rope to one of your shoulder D-rings and tug on it twice. I'll haul you up. Don't try to climb, just use your hands and feet to stay clear of the cliff face. Got it?"

"Check," Thor said. He strode into the cave, catching the rope in one hand. The dust ended abruptly a few meters past the entrance. He walked a few steps more, so that he left faint, dusty footprints on the bare stone, then he stopped. The rope terminated in a snap-hook and this he fastened to the D-ring atop his right shoulder. He gave the rope two sharp tugs and gave a little bound to clear the floor as the man above began hauling.

He sailed backward through the entrance, his feet now several meters above the floor. As he came up to the cliff face, Thor pushed away from the rock. If the man above was alone, he had to be very powerful. Even in one-sixth gee, a suited man with a full kit bag was no small weight to haul hand-over-hand. At the top of the cliff, the man grasped him beneath the arm and helped him scramble over the lip of the cliff, which had been covered with a polymer sheet to keep them from leaving marks.

"All okay?" the man asked.

"Right," Thor answered. He did a quick check of his suit and gear and found all well.

"Careful, now. We're going along that ridge of rock." The man pointed to a long hump of rock behind them. Thor could make out nothing of the man's face through the opaqued visor. He stepped onto the ridge while his companion gathered up the polymer sheet behind them. The ridge was steep on both sides, leaving only a narrow, sharp edge in the center. It made for precarious balance, but little dust could settle on the edge and they left no tracks.

The ridge ended two kilometers from the cave, and Thor saw a moon buggy, much like the one he had left at the cave, parked beneath a camouflage net. Behind the rear wheels was rigged a contraption Thor failed to recognize.

"Climb into the rear seat," said his guide.

Thor stowed his kit bag while the other man took down the camouflage net. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Mike," the other grunted, plainly not interested in exchanging pleasantries.

Thor climbed into the rear seat and Mike took the controls. The buggy started up and headed north at moderate speed. Curious, Thor turned to look at the apparatus hanging behind the mesh wheels. The dust raised by the wheels was caught in a metal trough and sifted back onto the lunar surface. There were no tire tracks left in the dust behind them.

"How far are we going?" Thor asked.

"You'll know when we get there."

Thor settled back and ran a routine systems check. Everything was in order. "How long will they look for me?" Thor said. "Those caves can be pretty dangerous. I'd hate for—"

"Nobody's going to waste a lot of time on you," Mike interrupted. "They won't start looking for days. They'll see your prints going in, they'll see you only used two tanks, and they'll know they're looking for a dead man. Hard enough staying alive out here without running extra risks for a stiff. They'll write you off and head back for Armstrong. Relax."

In a way, it was a relief. He hated to think of an elaborate rescue operation being mounted for him, with people risking their lives because of his ruse. On the other hand, it was a bit humbling. Back on Earth, the disappearance of a scion of a family like his would mean turning out the fleet and searching for weeks. If they were this tough on Luna, what would the Belt be like?

Thor nodded off, but was jerked awake abruptly when the buggy halted at a nondescript outcropping of rock. "Get out and give me a hand," Mike said. Puzzled, Thor dismounted as Mike crossed to the rock and pried a section away. It swung open on hidden hinges and inside Thor saw a clutter of gear, most of which he could not identify. In one corner was a rack of laser rifles and handguns. All such weapons were highly illegal for civilians to possess. Thor helped Mike stow the camouflage net, then they unbolted the track-hider gadget from the back of the buggy. Apparently, this was a clandestine warehouse for smugglers to store the equipment they could not afford to be caught with. As they drove away Thor noticed that the area they had entered was heavily-trafficked, with crisscrossing tire tracks everywhere he looked. That seemed odd. He had assumed that they were headed for some clandestine smuggler's port. This looked like the area near Armstrong.