Space For Hire (Seven For Space) (15 page)

"She's right, Pops," Sam put in.

I thought it over, nodding my bald skull, and fingering my ropy neck. "Guess there's no use asking for trouble. Set it for thirty-six. That's what I was when Kane began turning me into an old fart."

I realized, at that moment, that Kane must have put me under the machine's influence during the time I thought I was tripping through his candy forest. Which would explain why I hadn't set eyes on the machine before this.

Sam had taken out the office Scotch and offered me the bottle. "How about a jolt for the road?"

"Nope. It could set my ancient heart to racing," I said. "I'll hold off on the booze till I'm thirty-six again."

"Here we go," said Nicole, activating the machine.

The black shiny ball pulsed and shimmered. I felt the beam on me, like a miniature sun, restoring my lost years. My skin tightened; the wrinkles and flab began to disappear; my hair darkened; my cheeks filled out and my gnarled hands became flexible; the liver spots and freckles and heavy blue veins dimmed out, vanishing.

"You're getting younger by the second!" exclaimed Nicole. She turned to share her smile with Sam. And suddenly quit smiling. She gasped.

It was Sam. He was lolling on the floor beside the desk. His pink chubby little face was toothless, his tiny hands lost in the folds of his oversize suit.

"Stop the machine!" I yelled.

Nicole hastily shut it down. The beam flickered out.

We'd goofed. Sam had been caught inside the beam's central sweep area when Nicole had activated the machine. If we hadn't noticed what was happening to him he'd have been reduced to a grease spot by the time I'd reached thirty-six.

"Daaa! Ga, da! Daaada!"

"I think he's trying to say ‘Daddy'," Nicole giggled.

"This isn't funny," I told her. "We almost killed him. Another few seconds and …"

"He's just
darling
," said Nicole, picking little Sam up in her arms and cuddling him. She cooed, clucked at him, pinched his pink cheeks, patted his fat little tummy. "My pwecious wittle pwivate eye," she said in baby-talk. "Him's all wet!"

"Look," I said, snatching Sam away. "This is no time to play Mama. We'll put him back on the floor and reverse the damn machine and get him back to normal."

"But we haven't finished with you," she protested. "You're not nearly young enough yet."

"How old am I?"

"Seventy-one."

I was no kid. But first things first. "Put him under the beam," I told her.

Nicole shrugged. "All right, I'll reverse it and pump him back up to thirty-six. That's the right age for him, isn't it?"

"Guess so," I said. "You dumped us into the nearest parallel universe, didn't you?"

She said she had.

"Okay, then, we're the same age."

"And you have the same enemies!" a harsh frog-toned voice rasped from the doorway. Fruit, Spider and Kid Smiley had walked into the office, all holding guns in their mitts.

"We'll take the machine, Space," snapped Fruit.

"And the kid," said Spider. "Just to keep you two from tryin' to nab back the machine." He scooped up little Sammy.

"And these portable hats," growled Kid Smiley. "We don't want you jokers jumping into another world for help."

"But why take the machine?" Nicole asked.

Fruit answered with a sneer. "Are you kiddin', lady? We been watchin' that thing work an' it's worth a fortune. Kane don't have nothin' like it in this universe. We figure to sell it to him."

"Yeah," grinned Spider, "for enough jack to retire on."

"Maybe we'll never have to do no more jobs for nobody," said Kid Smiley.

"I wiped all three of you punks out back where I came from," I said."I can do it again."

"Try anything fancy and little Sammy here buys the big sleep," snapped the Kid.

Fruit bit into a Martian sandplum and the juice ran down his stubbled chin. "You wouldn't want to be responsible for the brat's death, would you, Space? If little Sammy here croaks it'll mean you killed yourself."

"Daaa, da! Gaa, goo!" Sammy said, reaching toward the half-eaten plum.

"We'll let the kid go just as soon as we've sold the machine to Kane," said Spider. He raised a hairy right hand. "An' that's a solemn promise!"

"Yeah," said Fruit. "Just sit tight till we let you know where to pick him up."

"Hah!" I snorted.

"We'll have to trust them, Sam," said Nicole. She looked worried and I didn't blame her any.

Spider picked up the round black age machine. Fruit had Sammy. Kid Smiley kept us covered as they backed slowly out of the office.

The outer door slammed.

They were gone — with six-month-old Sam Space.

And I was seventy-one. Which was still a little old to go goon hunting.

"What a dumb mess," I groaned, taking out the office Scotch.

At least it was properly aged.

I was on my third drink, deep in gloom, when I got a brain flash.

"Hey!"

"Hey what?" asked Nicole."I just thought of a way to get Sam and the age machine back."She'd been slumped on the couch, staring at my frayed rug. Now she had her head up, eyes shining. "How?"

"It's a bit on the complicated side. I'll explain when we get there."

"Get where?"

"Where we're going right now."

"But we're supposed to stay put until they contact us and tell us where to pick up Sammy."I snorted. "Those lousy goons won't be contacting anybody. They'll sell the machine to Kane and knock off Sammy for laughs."

"But I hoped …"

"Hope is for suckers! And suckers don't win." I tossed the empty

Scotch bottle in the wasteall and grabbed her hand. "C'mon, sister, let's hustle." And we hustled.

* * *

To Chicago.

You guessed it. To Nate Oliver's lab.

He was fitting a tiny nearhair moustache to a plastolife cinema replica of Errol Flynn when we broke in on him.

"Hold it," he said tensely. "Three hairs to go."

We waited while he finished the job. Then, dusting his fat pink hands, he turned to face us. He stared at me, jowls wobbing.

"Hi, Nate."

"My goodness, Sam! What's happened to you? You've — you've aged."

"I'm seventy-one," I admitted. "Men get old."

His plump tongue scrubbed at his dry lips. He kept staring. "Do you — have some kind of — terrible disease?"

And he backed away a step.

I grinned. "Naw. I'm working the Umani caper from another universe. This is the third you I've dealt with on the case."

His cheeks puffed. "The third me?"

I nodded. "First I dealt with you in an earlier universe. In that one you tried to send me back home. In my world you time-snapped me out of some big trouble. Now I've come to see you again in this world. That's three yous all told."

Oliver digested this info, then blinked at Nicole. "And who is this young lady?"

"Her name is Nicole. They killed her in the universe you sent me to. The first you, I mean. See, you overshot me on that trip and I landed in …" He was looking a little green around the gills so I cooled my story. "Forget it, Nate. Just take my word I need help."

Oliver's face had fat beads of sweat all over it like raindrops on a window. "How — can I help you?"

"They've got the Sam you know, the one you thought I was. And they're going to kill him."

"And he's wet," Nicole cut in. "The poor thing needs a diaper change."

"How can a man in his thirties need a diaper change?" Nate wanted to know.

"He's just a brat now," I said. "We all got fouled up with an age machine. It got out of hand, kind of, and reduced Sam to a six-month-old baby. Now they've got the machine and him with it."

"Who are they?"

"Three goons I killed back in my universe, except they're alive in this one."

Oliver slipped onto a stool, looking dazed.

"Here's the way it is," I said. "With me being over seventy the way I am I'm just not in shape to go hiking after those goonies."

"Granted," said Oliver. "But what has your physical condition to do with me?"

"You're my ace in the hole," I told him. "I'll bet you have some kind of universe transporter in your lab, right?"

"Wrong," he said with a wag of his wattles. "Closest thing is a rather balky time machine I'm fiddling with at present."

"That's bad news," I said to Nicole. "If he could have moved me into just one more universe I could go get myself and bring me here and send myself after me. But now that idea is shot."

"Not really," said Nicole, looking wise. Beautiful and wise. She turned to Oliver. "You said you have a time machine. Just how efficient is it?"

He shrugged his puffy shoulders. "It won't project beyond a few weeks either way, past or future. I think there's a kink in it somewhere."

Nicole smiled brightly. "But that's long enough. We'll send Sam back in time — to last week — and we'll have him pick up your Sam before we turned him into a baby. Then we'll bring that adult Sam back here and send him after his future baby self!"

I scratched my cheek. "Sounds like a good plan," I agreed. "We can always send the other Sam back later — to his own week. Yeah, I think you've got it, Nicky!"

And I gave her a smack. She was a smart dame all right.

"You've never called me Nicky before," she said softly.

Oliver wasn't happy. "You shouldn't really go, really you shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"You could disarrange the structure of our present by going into our past. I get a jumpy feeling in the pit of my tummy just thinking about all that disarranged structure."

"Nuts!" I growled. "Forget your tummy and just get me into last week."

"You're a headstrong old man, Sam," Nate declared. "Headstrong old men have been the root-cause of mankind's darkest hours."

I said nuts again to that, and we walked into Nate's lab to have a go with his time machine.

It was spooky looking — a rickrack of bolts and hinged panels and glowing coils and plastic doohickies.

"Are you sure this thing will do the job?" I asked.

Nate spread his fat-palmed hands in the air helplessly. "One does one's best. I am sure it will transfer your physical body into last week. Beyond that, I'm not sure of anything."

"How about the return trip?" I said. "Can you get me and the other Sam back here okay?"

"My range is quite limited as to time pickups," he said. "But if you appear with him at the exact spot at which you are deposited and adhere to my schedule I don't think there'll be any problems."

"What's your schedule?"

"My machine works within certain set time phases. I will drop you at one time phase and pick you up at another. They can't be missed or we lose you."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning you must not only appear on the same spot at which you exit but within a precise phase to be picked up. Didn't I just say that?" He was sweating again.

"I mean, how long will I have?"

Oliver said he'd need to check some data. He waddled away.

"I'm beginning to think my idea isn't worth the risk," Nicole said. She nibbled at a thumbnail.

"Don't bite your nails," I said. "Hate to see a woman biting her nails."

"Well, I'm nervous. Nate seems so — so uncertain of what he's sending you into."

"He's sending me into last week. I'll take care of the rest. We need another me to get myself back and that's that."

"All right," Nicole sighed. "But I insist on going with you this trip.

When you went after Esma you left me behind and I got into trouble."

I didn't like the setup. Still, the idea made sense. I needed to keep tabs on her. "Oke. You go with me."

She gave me a smile.

Oliver padded back waving a fistful of papers. "I have it all worked out mathematically," he said. "Time of departure, time of pickup, exit and re-entry — all phased out for you, Sam."

"For us," I corrected. "The girl goes with me."

Oliver nodded with a wobble of double chins. "Two are as easy to transport as one," he declared. "But the young lady's presence is required at this end."

Nicole looked startled. "Why?"

"To get us back. You see, my dear, I must go with Sam in order to make certain of the proper return-phase coordinates. They are vital to our success in re-entry. He could never manage it without me. We need you at this end."

"I see," she nodded. "Whatever's best."

"Good!" breathed Nate. "You'll have no difficulty in picking us up after I give you a few simple instructions."

He filled her in on the details while I prowled the lab, poking at test tubes and coiled wires. I was tense. Things were becoming too damn complex to suit me with all these alternate universes and dimensions to juggle. But I couldn't think of a better plan at the moment for getting Sammy back.

Nate said he was ready, and we sat down on two red bell-shaped seats within the body of the time machine.

Nicole leaned in to kiss me goodbye. "See you soon, lover."

"Yeah," I snapped, a little embarrassed. "Just don't get kidnapped or hypnotized while we're away."

She grinned, stepping back. Nate gave her some orders having to do with coordinates and junk.

"Better close your eyes, Sam," said Oliver. "Saves you from vertigo."

I did.

Nicole activated the time machine — and away we went into what I hoped was the middle of last week.

It was black. Deep black night. So dark I could see nothing. Yet I felt solid ground under me.

"Did we make it?" I asked.

"In a manner of speaking" Oliver replied.

"Better check our coordinates," I said.

"That's not necessary. We are in the proper time phase. I have no doubt that this is the middle of last week in terms of the week we left. But there is a problem I had not anticipated."

"What's that?" I asked.

"I'm all feathery," said Oliver. "And I have a beak and wings."

I gulped. My arms and hands were gone! I had just what Oliver had."What the hell's happened?"

"The exit phase of our trip worked fine," said Oliver. "It was the entry phase that malfunctioned, as it were."