The Rolling Stones (5 page)

Below the quarters was the cargo space and below that the power room. The little ship was a passenger-carrying freighter, or conversely a passenger ship with cargo space; it was this dual nature which had landed her, an unwanted orphan, in Dealer Dan’s second-hand lot. Too slow when carrying cargo to compete with the express liners, she could carry too few passengers to make money without a load of freight. Although of sound construction she did not fit into the fiercely competitive business world.

The twins elected to go on down into the power room. Hazel poked around the living quarters, nodded approvingly at the galley, finally climbed up into the control room. There she found her son stretched out in the pilot’s couch and fingering the controls. Hazel promptly swung herself into the co-pilot’s couch, settled down in the bare rack—the pneumatic pads were missing—and turned her head toward Roger Stone. She called out, “All stations manned and ready, Captain!”

He looked at her and grinned. “Stand by to raise ship!”

She answered, “Board green! Clear from tower! Ready for count off!”

“Minus thirty! Twenty-nine—twenty-eight—” He broke off and added sheepishly, “It
does
feel good.”

“You’re dern tootin’ it does. Let’s grab ourselves a chunk of it before we’re too old. This city life is getting us covered with moss.”

Roger Stone swung his long legs out of the pilot’s couch. “Um, maybe we should. Yes, we really should.”

Hazel’s booted feet hit the deck plates by his. “That’s my boy! I’ll raise you up to man size yet. Let’s go see what the twins have taken apart.”

The twins were still in the power room. Roger went down first; he said to Castor, “Well, son, how does it look? Will she raise high enough to crash?”

Castor wrinkled his forehead. “We haven’t found anything wrong, exactly, but they’ve taken her boost units out. The pile is just a shell.”

Hazel said, “What do you expect? For ’em to leave ‘hot’ stuff sitting in a decommissioned ship? In time the whole stern would be radioactive, even if somebody didn’t steal it.”

Her son answered, “Quit showing off, Hazel, Cas knows that. We’ll check the log data and get a metallurgical report later—if we ever talk business.”

Hazel answered, “King’s knight to queen’s bishop five. What’s the matter, Roger? Cold feet?”

“No, I like this ship…but I don’t know that I can pay for her. And even if she were a gift, it will cost a fortune to overhaul her and get her ready for space.”

“Pooh! I’ll run the overhaul myself, with Cas and Pol to do the dirty work. Won’t cost you anything but dockage. As for the price, we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“I’ll supervise the overhaul, myself.”

“Want to fight? Let’s go down and find out just what inflated notions Dan Ekizian has this time. And remember—let me do the talking.”

“Now wait a minute—I never said I was going to buy this bucket.”

“Who said you were? But it doesn’t cost anything to dicker. I can make Dan see reason.”

Dealer Dan Ekizian was glad to see them, doubly so when he found that they were interested, not in the Detroiter VII, but in a larger, more expensive ship. At Hazel’s insistence she and Ekizian went into his inner office alone to discuss prices. Mr. Stone let her get away with it, knowing that his mother drove a merciless bargain. The twins and he waited outside for quite a while; presently Mr. Ekizian called his office girl in.

She came out a few minutes later, to be followed shortly by Ekizian and Hazel. “It’s all settled,” she announced, looking smug.

The dealer smiled grudgingly around his cigar. “Your mother is a very smart woman, Mister Mayor.”

“Take it easy!” Roger Stone protested. “You are both mixed up in your timing. I’m no longer mayor, thank heaven—and nothing is settled yet. What are the terms?”

Ekizian glanced at Hazel, who pursed her lips. “Well, now, son,” she said slowly, “it’s like this. I’m too old a woman to fiddle around. I might die in bed, waiting for you to consider all sides of the question. So I bought it.”

“
You?
”

“For all practical purposes. It’s a syndicate. Dan puts up the ship; I wangle the cargo—and the boys and I take the stuff out to the Asteroids for a fat profit. I’ve always wanted to be a skipper.”

Castor and Pollux had been lounging in the background, listening and watching faces. At Hazel’s announcement Pollux started to speak; Castor caught his eye and shook his head. Mr. Stone said explosively, “That’s preposterous! I won’t let you do it.”

“I’m of age, son.”

“Mr. Ekizian, you must be out of your mind.”

The dealer took his cigar and stared at the end of it. “Business is business.”

“Well…at least you won’t get my boys mixed up in it. That’s out!”

“Mmm…” said Hazel. “Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s ask them.”

“They’re not of age.”

“No…not quite. But suppose they went into court and asked that I be appointed their guardian?”

Mr. Stone listened to this quietly, then turned to his sons. “Cas… Pol…did you frame this with your grandmother?”

Pollux answered, “No, sir.”

“Would you do what she suggests?”

Castor answered, “Now, Dad, you know we wouldn’t like to do anything like that.”

“But you would do it, eh?”

“I didn’t say so, sir.”

“Hmm—” Mr. Stone turned back. “This is pure blackmail—and I won’t stand for it. Mr. Ekizian, you knew that I came in here to bid on that ship. You knew that my mother was to bargain for it
as my agent.
You both knew that—but you made a deal behind my back. Now either you set that so-called deal aside and we start over—or I haul both of you down to the Better Business Bureau.”

Hazel was expressionless; Mr. Ekizian examined his rings. “There’s something in what you say, Mr. Stone. Suppose we go inside and talk it over?”

“I think we had better.”

Hazel followed them in and plucked at her son’s sleeve before he had a chance to start anything. “Roger? You really want to buy this ship?”

“I do.”

She pointed to papers spread on Ekizian’s desk. “Then just sign right there and stamp your thumb.”

He picked up the papers instead. They contained no suggestion of the deal Hazel had outlined; instead they conveyed to him all right, title and interest in the vessel he had just inspected, and at a price much lower than he had been prepared to pay. He did some hasty mental arithmetic and concluded that Hazel had not only gotten the ship at scrap-metal prices but also must have bulldozed Ekizian into discounting the price by what it would have cost him to cut the ship up into pieces for salvage.

In dead silence he reached for Mr. Ekizian’s desk stylus, signed his name, then carefully affixed his thumb print. He looked up and caught his mother’s eye. “Hazel, there is no honesty in you and you’ll come to a bad end.”

She smiled. “Roger, you do say the sweetest things.”

Mr. Ekizian sighed. “As I said, Mr. Stone, your mother is a very smart woman. I offered her a partnership.”

“Then there
was
a deal?”

“Oh, no, no, not that deal—I offered her a partnership in the lot.”

“But I didn’t take it,” Hazel added. “I want elbow room.”

Roger Stone grinned and shrugged, stood up. “Well, anyway—who’s skipper now?”

“You are—Captain.”

As they came out both twins said, “Dad, did you buy it?”

Hazel answered, “Don’t call him ‘Dad’—he prefers to be called ‘Captain’.”

“Oh.”

“Likewise ‘Oh,’” Pol repeated.

Dr. Stone’s only comment was, “Yes, dear. I gave them notice on the lease.” Meade was almost incoherent; Lowell was incoherent. After dinner Hazel and the twins took Meade and the baby out to see their ship; Dr. Stone—who had shown no excitement even during the Great Meteor Shower—stayed home with her husband. He spent the time making lists of things that must be attended to, both in the city and on the ship itself, before they could leave. He finished by making a list that read as follows:

He stared at it for a while, then said softly to himself, “Something tells me this isn’t going to work.”

ASPECTS OF DOMESTIC ENGINEERING

M
R
. S
TONE DID NOT SHOW

his ship’s organization bill to the rest of the family; he knew in his heart that the twins were coming along, but he was not ready to concede it publicly. The subject was not mentioned while they were overhauling the ship and getting it ready for space.

The twins did most of the work with Hazel supervising and their father, from time to time, arguing with her about her engineering decisions. When this happened the twins usually went ahead and did it the way they thought it ought to be done. Neither of them had much confidence in the skill and knowledge of their elders; along with their great natural talent for mechanics and their general brilliance went a cocksure, half-baked conceit which led them to think that they knew a great deal more than they did.

This anarchistic and unstable condition came to a head over the overhaul of the intermediate injector sequence. Mr. Stone had decreed, with Hazel concurring, that all parts which could be disassembled would so be, interior surfaces inspected, tolerances checked, and gaskets replaced with new ones. The intermediate sequence in this model was at comparatively low pressure; the gasketing was of silicone-silica laminate rather than wrung metal.

Spare gaskets were not available in Luna City, but had to be ordered up from Earth; this Mr. Stone had done. But the old gaskets appeared to be in perfect condition, as Pollux pointed when they opened the sequence. “Hazel, why don’t we put these back in? They look brand new.”

His grandmother took one of the gaskets, looked it over, flexed it, and handed it back. “Lots of life left in it; that’s sure. Keep it for a spare.”

Castor said, “That wasn’t what Pol said. The new gaskets have to be flown from Rome to Pikes Peak, then jumped here. Might be three days, or it might be a week. And we can’t do another thing until we get this mess cleaned up.”

“You can work in the control room. Your father wants all new parts on everything that wears out.”

“Oh, bother! Dad goes too much by the book; you’ve said so yourself.”

Hazel looked up at her grandson, bulky in his pressure suit. “Listen, runt, your father is an A-one engineer. I’m privileged to criticize him; you aren’t.”

Pollux cut in hastily, “Just a sec, Hazel, let’s keep personalities out of this. I want your unbiased professional opinion: are those gaskets fit to put back in, or aren’t they? Cross your heart and shame the devil.”

“Well… I say they are fit to use. You can tell your father I said so. He ought to be here any minute now; I expect he will agree.” She straightened up. “I’ve got to go.”

Mr. Stone failed to show up when expected. The twins fiddled around, doing a little preliminary work on the preheater. Finally Pollux said, “What time is it?”

“Past four.”

“Dad won’t show up this afternoon. Look, those gaskets are all right and, anyhow, two gets you five he’d never know the difference.”

“Well, he would okay them if he saw them.”

“Hand me that wrench.”

Hazel did show up again but by then they had the sequence put back together and had opened up the preheater. She did not ask about the injector sequence but got down on her belly with a flashlight and mirror and inspected the preheater’s interior. Her frail body, although still agile as a cricket under the Moon’s weak pull, was not up to heavy work with a wrench, but her eyes were sharper—and much more experienced—than those of the twins. Presently she wiggled out. “Looks good,” she announced. “We’ll put it back together tomorrow. Let’s go see what the cook ruined tonight.” She helped them disconnect their oxygen hoses from the ship’s tank and reconnect to their back packs, then the three went down out of the ship and back to Luna City.

Dinner was monopolized by a hot argument over the next installment of
The Scourge of the Spaceways.
Hazel was still writing it but the entire family, with the exception of Dr. Stone, felt free to insist on their own notions of just what forms of mayhem and violence the characters should indulge in next. It was not until his first pipe after dinner that Mr. Stone got around to inquiring about the day’s progress.

Castor explained that they were about to close up the preheater. Mr. Stone nodded. “Moving right along—good! Wait a minute; you’ll just have to tear it down again to put in the—Or did they send those gaskets out to the ship? I didn’t think they had come in yet?”

“What gaskets?” Pollux said innocently. Hazel glanced quickly at him but said nothing.

“The gaskets for the intermediate injector sequence, of course.”

“Oh,
those!
” Pollux shrugged. “They were okay, absolutely perfect to nine decimal places—so we put ’em back in.”

“Oh, you did? That’s interesting. Tomorrow you can take them out again—and I’ll stand over you when you put the new ones in.”

Castor took over. “But Dad, Hazel said they were okay!”

Roger Stone looked at his mother. “Well, Hazel?”

She hesitated. She knew that she had not been sufficiently emphatic in telling the twins that their father’s engineering instructions were to be carried out to the letter; on the other hand she had told them to check with him. Or had she? “The gaskets were okay, Roger. No harm done.”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “So you saw fit to change my instructions? Hazel, are you itching to be left behind?”

She noted the ominously gentle tone of his voice and checked an angry reply. “No,” she said simply.

“‘No’ what?”

“No, Captain.”

“Not captain yet, perhaps, but that’s the general idea.” He turned to his sons. “I wonder if you two yahoos understand the nature of the situation?”

Castor bit his lip. Pollux looked at his twin, then back at his father. “Dad,
you’re
the one who doesn’t understand the nature of the situation. You’re making a fuss over nothing. If it’ll give you any satisfaction, we’ll open it up again—but you’ll simply see that we were right. If you had seen those gaskets, you would have passed them.”