Look Out For Space (Seven For Space) (2 page)

But I'd forgotten S.P. Henshaw's lethal appendage.

I still had him by the throat when his long scaly tail whipped up, encircling my head. A hard jerk from the onion magnate and my choke-hold was broken. Suddenly I found myself slammed to the neardirt floor, a flat green lizard's foot on my neck.

"You see, Mr. Space," he hissed, "I don't need the help of my froggies in attending to you. I am quite capable of dispatching you on my own. In another two micromoments your neck will snap like a Venusian breadstalk under the power of my foot."

And he was right about that. It would have. Except that in two micromoments the door had melted and Police Sergeant Shaun O'Malley of Mars Homicide had lobbed a 206-F paralysis doughnut into the meetden.

Stanton Prentiss Henshaw could not move a single muscle anywhere on his lizard's body.

I slid out from my awkward position beneath his paralyzed foot and stood up to shake O'Malley's calloused hand. "We've had our differences, Sarge," I sobbed, tears cascading down my face, "but this time I owe
you
one."

He brushed angrily at his misting eyes. The six Earthmen with him were all weeping openly. "How come," asked O'Malley, "you ain't stiffed like the big lizard?"

"I've been injected against doughnut paralysis," I told him. "One of the precautions I take in my checkered profession."

"Yeah," he growled, sniffing. You're some smart cookie."

"Am I to take that as a compliment?"

"Take it any way you like," O'Malley told me. He blew his nose into a large red police kerchief. "I'd say you're damn lucky we got here when we did."

"I'd say so, too."

"How'd you reach us, anyhow?"

I tapped my hip. "Pelvic transmitter. Set into the lower part of my back just above the buttocks. When I exert a certain amount of pressure on either buttock it transmits a distress signal which, in this case, was homed into your office. I knew you'd hustle up here when you got my signal. I was sending it from my buttocks for quite a while. Before I finally dropped off to sleep, that is."

"Why buzz Mars Homicide?" O'Malley wanted to know. "This case is way out of my jurisdiction."

"Normally it would be," I sniffed, "but your scaly friend here is subject to Martian law. He's the —"

O'Malley cut into my explanation with an oath. He swung his tousled Irish head toward the six men behind him. "Stop that damned sniveling, the lot of you!"

"Sorry, Sarge," one of them said. "But all these lousy onions would make a brass monkey cry. Right, boys?"

His five companions nodded, wet-eyed.

"Just be
quiet
about it, then," snapped the Sergeant. "I want to hear what kinda info this cheap snoop has to offer."

"Why do you hate private detectives so much?" I asked him. "I'd really like to know."

"I don't have to tell you anything, Space," he said, dabbing at a tear. "It's
you
who's doin' the telling. Now spill!"

"Okay, okay." I nodded. "As I was saying — Henshaw's the boy who arranged the Milo Hickam Petrovanny knock-off in Bubble City. First he tried a pressure play on Milo, but the guy wouldn't buckle under and sign over his Martian onion concessions. So Henshaw had him murdered. Which is where Mars Homicide comes into it. He's all yours now."

"And I guess you got proof of this?"

"Of this and a lot more. Enough to put away Mr. Henshaw for the rest of his unnatural life. I'd say the onion king has just lost his onions!"

The big onion caper in chapter one has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of this book, but I wanted to avoid starting out in my crummy office since too damn many cases start out in the detective's crummy office.

On Mars. In Bubble City, where I grind for bread. What can I say about my office? It's cheap and seedy. Worn nearcarpet. A jammed flowdrawer in the faxfile. And my glowindow doesn't glo.

But I make out okay. I'm not complaining. Sure, I get lonely sometimes. And depressed. But I'm in a lonely, depressing business. I don't get many jobs as colorful as the Milo Petrovanny onion case. Most of my time is spent on dull, routine capers such as uncovering a multidimensional star dodge tax racket on Ganymede, or doing a tail job one girdle importer from Outer Capella who runs off with the overweight underaged daughter of a rich but diseased Neptunian pork stuffer.

Routine. Simon simple.

But the case at hand, the one this book is all about, was
anything
but simple.

I was faxfiling some plastic when he came in — my new client, that is. My office door is easy to walk through because it isn't there anymore; I sent it out for repair when a Moon Looney kicked it into splinters during the last lunar eclipse. They go kind of wacko when this happens, so it didn't surprise me much. Anyhow, I sent the door out to be fixed and never bothered to pick it up. That was a long time ago — and explains why potential clients are always walking in when my backs turned. This one had a voice soft as an angel's eyelash. The first thing he said was, "Bless you, my son."

Shutting the flowdrawer, I gave him a quick look-over. Earthborn, and on the tall side, maybe eight feet. Dressed in a long fur top velvcape. Colorless deadman's hands and a zealot's eyes, ringed with dark pouches. His white hair was wild and seemed to explode from his high skull. I pegged him for a freako and said, " I don't want any."

"Want any
what
, my son?"

"Any of whatever it is you're selling. And I'm
not
your son."

"Ah, but we are, all of us in this great universe, sons and daughters, interconnected and ever flowing within the divine cosmic bloodline."

"Look, just what are you peddling, Pops?"

Storklike, he walked over to my cracked client's chair and folded down into it, arranging his velvcape so that it covered his skinny knees — which I appreciated since a freako's skinny knees inevitably turn me off.

Then he said, "My wares are those of eternity. I sell blessings, Mr. Space."

"You already laid a free one on me when you came in," I said, sitting behind my desk.

"Ah, but I do not wish to sell you. Indeed, I wish to
buy
you. Or, that is to say, your services." Suiting action to words, he hauled out a fat wad of solarcredits, leaned forward and fanned them neatly across the front of my desk. A beautiful sight.

For the first time, I grinned at him. "After this little display I'd ask you to sit down if you weren't already sitting. Since you are, I'll move on to the next two questions: who are you and why are you here?"

"I am Brother Thaddius of the Universal Cosmic Church Realized. And I am here because I have lost something I wish to find. Private detectives find lost things, do they not?" His pouched eyes burned at me from his bony, wild-haired skull.

"They do," I said.

"Then we are in basic agreement."

"That depends on what you've lost and on whether or not I think I can find it."

"Excellent! I mistrust quick affirmations. You are a most wary and suspicious individual."

"Glad I've won your approval." I said flatly. "Now, Brother, what have you lost?"

He laced his deadman's fingers carefully together in his lap and said, very softly, "My asteroid."

What could I say to that? I just sat back and listened, raising an eyebrow to let him know I was with him.

"You see, Mr. Space, I am what the public press call a 'Planet Preacher.' As was my sainted father before me who established, unfunded — and notwithstanding the scorn of his contemporaries — the Universal Cosmic Church Realized."

I switched eyebrows as he continued.

"Since our solar population is expanding so rapidly, within and beyond this System, good people of the cloth such as myself are sorely needed to place the seal of cosmic blessings upon new worlds. For a specified fee, paid in advance, I stand prepared to travel to any body of matter in our known universe and bless it."

"Okay, Brother, I get the picture. You bless for bread. But what has all this got to do with a missing asteroid? I don't see the tieup."

The tallish preacher unfolded himself from the chair and walked to my non-glo glowindow, looking upward. One of his bony arms gestured toward the sky. "It seemed a wise investment — a simple expansion of my trade."

"What did?"

"My purchase of an asteroid." He kept his gaze fixed on the Martian sky. "It was modest in size and quite a bargain, really. Out in the Horsehead Nebula. I reasoned that if purchased a few asteroids at reduced rates I could rent them, pre-blessed, to solar families for a comfortable fee. I could even throw in a bonus blessing every now and again to thicken the soup, as it were." He turned in my direction. "Do you follow me?"

I nodded. "Like you said, a simple trade expansion."

"My taxie advised me that owning rental property in the Horsehead would, at worst, offer a capital gains shelter and, at best, a potential enlargement of my annual gross intake, not to mention the
obvious
advantage of deductible reverse assets and —"

"Sure, sure," I cut in. "But get to the point, Brother."

"Well … I made the final payment and journeyed joyfully out to bless my property when I discovered it had vanished. I double-checked my star coordinates to make certain, but there was no mistake. My asteroid was missing."

"Could you describe it?"

He unrolled a starmap from his velvcape pocket and placed it in front of me. "Here, as you'll note, are the asteroid's total terminal polar specs, including marginal pattern data as well as diametric horizon readouts."

I glimmed the map while Brother Thaddius kept blabbing.

"I realize all too well that going to the police with my problem would be utterly useless. Obviously there's been foul play. Plainly and simply, my asteroid was stolen. No other explanation is possible. For what reason, I cannot imagine since it contains no material of intrinsic value within its textural makeup. I reasoned that only a man in your clandestine and somewhat unsavory under-the-counter line of endeavor could hope to locate it." He placed his bony face close to mine. "
Can
you find it, Mr. Space?"

"Maybe," I said. "And maybe not. There are a few places I could look."

He sighed. "I suppose this is all 'old hat' to you. Just another vanishing asteroid
clapper
. Isn't that the term?"

"The term is
caper,"
I said, "and you're wrong about it being 'old hat' to me. In fact, you're the first gink to pop in with a vanishing asteroid since I opened this office."

The preacher looked startled; his pouched eyes blinked rapidly. "Then … if I may ask … how do you know where to begin looking?"

"That's for me to know and you to pay to find out," I said. "Let's talk solarcredits."

"Ah, by all means. Naturally I am prepared to pay your normal fee."

"My normal fee doubles when I have to work outside the System.

Normally my services run two hundred solarcreds per Marsday. But, on a job like this one, it'll cost you twice that much."

"I accept," said Brother Thaddius, offering me a deadman's hand. "Please,
do
find my asteroid for me, Mr. Space."

"I make no promises."

"Nor have I attempted to extract any."

I stood up. "Where can I contact you?"

He handed me a plascard. "I can always be reached at this address. If I'm on a planet call your message will be forwarded without delay."

I said fine to that.

"Bless you!" he intoned, slipping a silver shaker from his pocket and sprinkling me and my desk with what I guessed was holy water. "My prayers and the prayers of all those who reside within the holy embrace of the Universal Cosmic Church Realized ride with you on your eventful journey into star-blazed depths. Bless you, bless you, bless you."

I wiped two beads of holy water off my nose. "How much will that little act cost me?"

Brother Thaddius folded his dead white hands into the thickish velvcape and bowed to me. And, without replying to my wisecrack, glided out of the office.

Storklike. Very definitely storklike.

In what some knucklehead historians still call 'the good old days' — way back in the 20th century — private dicks were famous for using muscle power in place of brainpower, for bullying and blustering their way into an investigation without regard to proper police procedures. Now I can bull and bluster when I have to, and I've got the knots on my nog to prove it, but I've also learned to take full advantage of the wondrous age we live in. A private dick doesn't have to depend on just himself these days. If he needs some expert help, it's available. The scientific gimbos are always coming up with a new wrinkle.

Which is why, after my storklike client ankled out, I jetcabbed over to utilize the latest wonder of modern science, the Hu Albin Amazing Automated Crime Clinic at Red Sands Avenue and 72nd Street.

Albin, who'd lived to be 126 on a diet of raw blueberries and gork's milk, owned the largest collection of crime fiction on ten planets by the time he was ten. By twelve, he'd memorized over 236,000 clues and was a Junior Consultant to the Greater Federated Clue Finders of Bigger Bearlake, Minnesota. He doted on 20th century fictional detectives; their cases fascinated him.

Inspired by a Martian research grant of six billion zorcas, Albin left Earth at age of 76 to perfect his Amazing Automated Crime Clinic here in Bubble City — a computerized, mile-long building which is famous throughout the System.

In his twilight years, Albin became a tart-tongued crusty old geeze, and his oft-repeated declaration, which inspired the Clinic, was boldly carved into the building's arched ziggolite entrance hatch:

PISS ON CRIME FACTS! GIVE ME CRIME FICTION EVERY GODDAMN TIME!

As old Albin used to say: "The crimes of the mind are often more complex and fascinating than crimes executed by the physical body." I was never quite sure just what the hell that meant, but I figured that Hu Albin's Amazing Automated Crime Clinic was a good bet for me at the moment.