Outcasts of Heaven Belt Read online

  Chaim saw the dome of the abandoned experimental station, nearly a kilometer away across the flat, subpolar plain; and closer in, the ungainly bulk of the prospector’s ship. Both of us made a better landing than we had a right to…Beyond them both, along the incredibly distant horizon, he thought he saw a dusting of pale snow pocked with broad, shallow craters: the south-polar icecap of Planet Two. He imagined the incredible volatile resources this world represented; remembered abruptly that they were all at the bottom of a gravity well.

  “Come on, Red. Get your camera and let’s get going. This is what we came for!” Siamang’s voice was good natured, eager. Chaim felt a surge of relief, hoping Siamang’s professional business dealings would be easier to record than his private life.

  “Coming, boss…Aren’t you coming?” He looked back at Mythili. “Walking on a planet isn’t something everybody’s done—”

  She nodded. “I know. But I have to stay with the ship; it’s not very well designed to deal with the effects of an atmosphere. I have to keep the cabin warm enough so that the instruments don’t freeze, and enough fuel has to be bled from the tanks so that they don’t rupture. And besides,” she lowered her voice, “I stay out of corporate business dealings.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll show you my home movies when I get back.” He settled his helmet onto his head, latched it, picked up his camera. He staggered, stunned by its weight. The surface gravity of Planet Two was over a hundred times normal: He suddenly wished he’d accepted the corporation’s offer of a lightweight prewar camera, instead of insisting on his own.

  “Come on, Red!”

  He followed Siamang through the lock and down the precarious rungs of the ladder. The atmospheric pressure kept his suit from ballooning; it clutched him as he moved, with hands of ice.

  “Damn it!” Siamang stumbled sideways, struck by an invisible blow: wind, Dartagnan realized, as it shoved him roughly back against the side of the ship. His helmet rang on metal. The surface air had been calm when they set down, but the wind was rising now, swirling the blue-gray dust into translucent curtains. Between the gusts he caught sight of a tiny figure starting toward them from the dome.

  They struggled out across the shallow, flame-fused dish of the ship’s landing area, went on across the fine, loose surface of the dust. “We’re real dirt-siders now, boss,” he said cheerfully, more cheerfully than he felt. Dust sandblasted his faceplate; he shut his eyes against it, beginning to sweat, already shivering. Siamang didn’t answer, as he struggled to keep his footing; his face was grim, barely visible behind his helmet glass. Dartagnan looked up at the sky, the spinel sun grown large against an alien ultramarine blue. He thought of sapphire, the only thing he could remember that possessed the same purity of color. They should have named it Blue instead of Two…Blue Hell. He looked down again, across the blue-gray plain at the dome, hardly larger, and at the suited figure closing with them now, proof that they were actually making headway. He let his camera slip off of his stiffening shoulder, wrapped the strap around a numb, gloved hand.

  “If you aren’t a sight for sore eyes!” A stranger’s voice burst from his helmet speakers: the prospector, castaway, welcoming committee of one. The man held out his hands as he reached them, caught one of their own in each, shook them, bowing, all at once. He moved almost easily, Chaim noticed, envious.

  “That’s not all that’s sore,” Siamang said, his congeniality sounding strained. “Let’s get in out of this damned atmosphere.”

  “Sure, of course. Let me take that for you, I’m used to this—” The man reached for Dartagnan’s camera.

  Chaim waved him off, recalling his duty. “No, thanks, I’m with the media…let me get a shot of this…” He moved out, hefting the camera, plugged in, focused, pressed the trigger, tripping over his own feet. Historic Moment, Historic Rescue, Historic Setting…Cameraman Busts His Ass…They were passing the prospector’s stranded ship. Siamang’s voice reached him. “Get a shot of that, Red—”

  “Right, boss.” He did a close-up of the name painted on the hull, and the silhouette of an insect. “The Esso Bee?” He laughed incredulously, heard the others laugh, in amusement, and in startled recognition. He looked back toward the prospector’s shadowed face, “Kwaime Sekka-Olefin, I presume?” He remembered the details of the original news broadcast. Their stranded man was an heir to a distillery fortune, but the actual corporation had been destroyed during the Civil War: Sekka-Olefin Volatiles, Esso for short, and this “secret” experimental station had been run by them before the war.

  “That’s right; and damned glad to meet you!” The man laughed again. “My God—it’s wonderful!”

  “Our pleasure,” Siamang said easily, “our pleasure to be of service, to one man or all mankind.”

  They reached the low dome at last. Dartagnan recorded it for posterity, set in the desolation of wind and dust and snow, tried to keep his chattering teeth from recording on the soundtrack. Breathing hard, he trudged ahead to film their arrival, found the dark, welcoming entrance of the shelter. A passageway led steeply down, he noticed, as they passed through the airlock; he realized the main part of the installation must be underground, to help maintain an even interior temperature. He noticed that one wall of the passage was oddly serrated. He backed slowly toward it, filming, as the others entered the hall; stared, through the lens, as Sekka-Olefin suddenly lunged toward him. “Look out—!” Olefin’s voice rattled in his helmet. Olefin’s glove caught at his arm, missed, as Dartagnan stepped out onto the air.

  The air let him down, and with a yelp of surprise he fell backwards down the stairs. The camera landed on his stomach. He lay dazed and battered, gasping for breath, seeing stars without trying. The others reached him, somehow managing not to land on top of him. They lifted the camera off of him, hauled him to his feet.

  “You all right, Red?”

  “Say, didn’t you see the steps there—?”

  “Steps?” he mumbled. “What do you mean—uh!” His right ankle buckled under a fraction of his mass, pain shot up his leg, on up his spine like an electric shock. “My leg…” He pressed back against the corridor wall, balancing on one foot. “Hurts like hell.”

  “Hell’s what this place is,” Siamang muttered, disgusted. “How about your camera?” He dropped it into Dartagnan’s arms.

  Dartagnan lost his balance; Olefin reached out and caught him. He shook the sealed case, probed it, turned it over, and peered through the lens. His chest hurt. He replugged the recording jack. “Looks okay…Ought to be a great shot of the ceiling as I went over backwards.” He tasted blood from his split lip. “I think the damned thing landed on top of me on purpose.”

  “Good thing it’s tougher than you are,” Siamang said, “or you might be out of a job, Red.”

  Dartagnan laughed, weakly. He looked back up the passageway. The purpose of the serrated wall was appallingly obvious to him, in hindsight; steps, a series of plateaus for breaking downward momentum under high gravity. That’s adding insult to injury…He grimaced.

  The prospector offered him a shoulder to lean on, and they went on along the hall.

  “How about a drink to celebrate the occasion? To celebrate my not having to drink alone—” Olefin picked a bottle up off of the floor in the littered cubicle that had been his home for the past ten megaseconds. Dartagnan noticed a pile of other bottles, mostly empty.

  “Sounds good. I could use some antifreeze; this place is instant death. How cold does it get here, anyway? It must be zero degrees Kelvin…” Siamang rubbed circulation back into his fingers. They had taken off their suits, at Olefin’s urging; the air would have been uncomfortably cool under other circumstances.

  “No…no, it only gets down to about 230 degrees Kelvin after the sun sets. Of course, that’s not counting the wind chill factor.” Olefin grinned.

  Dartagnan sat on the bare cot, his leg up, his ankle swelling inside his boot. Olefin glanced back at him, questioning. Chaim noticed that the eyes were green, f
reckled with brown, under the heavy brows, brow-ridges. Olefin was in his fifties and well preserved for a man who had spent most of his life in space. His unkempt, uncut hair was receding, silvering at the temples, a startling brightness against his brown skin. Distinguished Scion of Old Money…didn’t know any of ’em were real people. Dartagnan shook his head. “No, thanks…I’m a teetotaler.”

  Siamang looked surprised.

  “Medicinal purposes?” Olefin asked, gestured with the bottle.

  “That’s why I don’t.” He shook his head again, sincerely remorseful. “I can’t drink. Got an ulcer.” He wiped his bloody lip.

  Siamang’s surprise burst out in laughter. “An ulcer? What’ve you got to worry about, Red?”

  Dartagnan sighed. “I worry about having to refuse a free drink. I could sure use one.”

  Olefin poured vodka into hemispherical cups; the clear liquid stayed level and didn’t ooze back up the sides as he poured. Afraid to start feeling sorry for himself, Dartagnan reached for his camera. “Would you say you were lucky in finding so much intact here, Demarch Sekka-Olefin? It looks like all the life-support systems are still functional. Did that save your life? What happened to the researchers stationed here, after the war?” It almost felt good to him, after seven megaseconds of enforced silence.

  Olefin leaned forward on his stool, sharing the eagerness for the sound of his own voice. “Yes, I sure as hell was lucky. Would’ve been damned fatal on board the Esso Bee. But nothing actually happened to damage this station during the Civil War; nobody knew it was here except Esso. After the war nobody was in a position to come here at all…From the looks of things, the crew must have starved to death.”

  Dartagnan swallowed. God, the public will love this…“But…uh, the valuable salvage finds you made will mean that they didn’t die in vain? Their discoveries will go to help the living—?”

  “Yes…yes! In ways I never expected.” Olefin’s voice took on a vaguely fanatical note. “Did you know that—”

  Siamang shifted impatiently, set down his cup. “Demarch Sekka-Olefin; Red. If I’m not imposing—” there was no trace of sarcasm “—I’d like to ask that the interviewing be postponed until we’ve had the chance to discuss more important matters.”

  “Oh. Certainly…” Olefin broke off, seemed suddenly almost glad of the interruption. “Anything I can do, considering what you’ve done for me.”

  Siamang composed his face as Dartagnan turned the camera on him. “Of course, the most important matter, the basic reason I’ve come four hundred million kilometers, is—”

  —more money, Dartagnan thought.

  “—to see that you get safely off this miserable hell-world of a planet.” He produced something packaged in foam from his thin folder. “This is the replacement unit, complete with the instructions, for the component that was damaged when your ship landed here on Planet Two.”

  Olefin beamed like a child with a birthday present; but Chaim noted the dark flash of another sort of humor that moved behind the hazel eyes. “‘For want of a chip, the ship was lost!’ To think of all the time and money I put in, perfecting the Esso Bee and a nuke-electric that could drag home half a planet; the best design possible—to have it all go for nothing, because one single piece of electronics was put on the outside, when it should have been on the inside…Thank you—I literally can’t thank you enough, Demarch Siamang; but I’ll do my best.” He stood, reached out to shake Siamang’s hand heartily. Seated again, he poured himself another drink, raised it in salute, drank it down.

  “Well, you can repay us, in a sense…” Siamang paused, poised, disarmingly reticent, “…by giving Siamang and Sons the opportunity to be the first corporation to make an offer on the computer software that you reported finding.”

  Olefin gave a quick nod, barely visible, that was not meant to be agreement.

  Siamang went on, oblivious. “As you obviously know, it would be vital in streamlining our distilling processes—”

  “And in streamlining the processing of a lot of other distilleries.” Olefin interrupted with unexpected smoothness. “What I had in mind, Demarch Siamang, was to call a public auction on the media for all the salvage, when I return to the Demarchy. I planned to offer to you, or whomever came after me, a substantial percentage of the take as a reward—”

  Siamang’s expression tightened imperceptibly. “What we had in mind, Demarch Sekka-Olefin, was more on the order of a flat fee offer on the software. We’re not interested in any of the rest, you could bargain however you wanted on that. But it’s very important to us—naturally—that Siamang and Sons is the firm to get those programs.”

  And a general auction wouldn’t guarantee you did. Dartagnan hid a smile behind his camera. He realized suddenly why Siamang and Sons had wanted an edited tape, and not live transmission, on this rescue mission: business transactions were never meant to be public affairs.

  “I understand your feelings, Siamang; come from a distillery family myself. But I feel a covert agreement with one firm is too monopolistic, not in keeping with the Demarchy’s traditions of free enterprise…And besides, to be blunt, I’ve got important plans for the profit I’ll be making on this salvage, and I want to get as good a deal on it as possible. That software is by far the most valuable part of it.”

  “I see.” Siamang’s eyes flickered to the replacement part safely settled on Olefin’s knees. Chaim guessed, without trying, what wish he made. “Well, then, if you don’t mind, I’ll make that pleasant trek to our ship one more time and radio the home company about your position on the matter.” His smile was sunlight on the cold edge of his voice. “They may give me a little more flexibility in making an offer…” He bowed.

  Chaim stood up, goaded by an indefinable unease: he sat down again abruptly.

  Siamang glanced back, pulling on his suit. “You stay here, Red. Finish your interview. You’d just slow me up. I don’t intend to spend any more time out in that open air than I have to.” He bowed again courteously to Sekka-Olefin, and left the room.

  Dartagnan listened to the odd shuffling of unaccustomed footsteps recede, and swore under his breath, with pain and frustration. He lifted the camera again, compulsively, protective coloration. Through the lens he saw Olefin shake his head, hand up, and reach to pour himself another drink. Chaim let the camera drop, irritated, but relieved to see that the prospector wasn’t drinking this one down like the others. There was plenty of time for an interview: with the communications time-lag, Siamang wouldn’t be back for at least three kiloseconds.

  Olefin grinned. “A little loosens tongues, and makes life easier; a lot loosens brains, and makes it hell. I try to draw the line…Fall was worse than you care to admit, wasn’t it? Where does it hurt?…maybe I ought to have a look at that ankle.” He stood up.

  Dartagnan leaned back against the cold wall, laughed once. “Ask me where it doesn’t hurt! Black and blue and green all over…Thanks, but you’d have to cut off my boot, by now, and it’s the only one I’ve got. Doesn’t matter, we’ll be back in normal gee soon and it won’t give me any trouble. I just have to get the job done now—” He winced as Olefin’s fingers probed along his ankle.

  “Job comes before everything, even you, huh? So you’re a corporate flak…” Olefin’s fist rapped the sole of his boot, “Siamang’s man?”

  “I’m—hoping to be!” Dartagnan muttered, through clenched teeth. “So when he tells me to jump, I don’t ask why, or how…I just ask, ‘Is this high enough?’”

  “You won’t be doing much jumping for a while, for anybody. Got a sprain, maybe a fracture.” The green-brown eyes studied him, amused; he wondered exactly what was funny. Olefin went back to pick his drink off a dusty shelf. “Don’t think I could stand to work for anybody else. Comes from being raised among the idle rich, I suppose…”

  “You don’t have to be rich, believe me.” Dartagnan settled on an elbow, and the cot creaked.

  Olefin looked at him, the rough brows rose.
r />   He smiled automatically. “My father was a prospector. Rock poor, to the day he died…just when he’d finally found something big, or so he claimed.” Establish a rapport with the subject, get a better interview…

  “That right? What was his name?” An encouraging interest showed on Olefin’s face.

  “Dartagnan—Gamal Dartagnan.”

  “Yeah, I knew him—” Olefin nodded at his drink. “Didn’t know he had a son. Only talked to him four or five times.”

  “You and me both. He took me out with him, though. Just before the last trip he made.”

  “That’s right…heard about his accident. Very sorry to hear it.”

  Chaim shifted his weight. “They called it an accident.”

  Olefin sat down, said carefully, “Are you saying you don’t think it was?”

  He shrugged. “My father’d been prospecting for a long time. He knew enough not to make a mistake that big. And it seemed a little coincidental to me that a corporation just happened to be right there to pick up his find.”

  “Somebody had to get there first—” Sekka-Olefin shook his head. “I suppose in your line of work you don’t see the best side of corporation policy. But not many stoop to that kind of thing; that would be suicide, if it ever got out. Maybe his instruments went out; accidents happen, people make mistakes…space doesn’t give you a second chance.”

  Dartagnan nodded, looking down. “Maybe so. Maybe that is what happened. I suppose you’d know the truth if anybody would—you play both sides of the game…He held that damned junkheap together with frozen spit—”

  Olefin sipped his drink, expressionless. “What made you decide to quit prospecting to become a mediaman?”

  Dartagnan wondered suddenly who was interviewing whom. “Prospecting. Maybe I didn’t know when I was well off.”

  “But now it’s too late.”

  He wasn’t sure whether it was a question or a moral judgment. “Not if I make good in this job…”