Chapter II

I didn't mind the brush-off but the idea of her calling for Perry Acree to toss me out fanned my slow burn to a blaze.

"That seed-sized cipher?" I scoffed. "Why, for two centi-credits I'd--"

Shanig's door opened and Perry came out. He added up the score in a blink and jumped to the conclusion that I was waiting to settle with him.

"Now look, Bill," he began. "I couldn't help it if--"

"That secret agent stunt of yours just cost me five thousand credits, Acree," I said, cutting him short. "I think you're going to be as sorry as Shanig before this is over."

He lost the little color he had. "I don't want trouble with you, Mr. Bailey! Cheryl, will you--"

The girl pushed her buzzer. Her eyes dodged mine, and I could read her mind like the back of a credit-note. She was making allowances for Perry but it hurt to call for help.

Shanig's office door opened again and his two uglies came out. Both of them had freeze guns and the yellow Martie wore my Quantrell blaster tucked into his belt, but it was plain that they didn't expect to need them.

"Hey, take it easy!" Perry wailed, not wanting any part of this. "That's Blaster Bill Bailey you jerks are--"

They closed in, disregarding him, and I cracked their heads together hard enough to make their knees bend like rubber. Then I took back my Quantrell and left them holding each other up like a pair of skohl addicts.

"You can phonovise me at the Argonaut Club if you change your mind about that weekend on Phobos," I told the redhead. "But don't wait too long or this will have gone the way of all credits."

I tucked the check away and went out with Perry Acree trailing apologetically at my heels. Shanig had sent him to bring back the smiley it seemed, so I let him tag along. He left the _Annabelle_ with Joey under his arm and that mesmerized Sunday-services look on his face, and I strolled down to Martian Bankings with my check.

It wasn't really a surprise to find that Shanig had stopped payment on it. What did give me the devil of a turn, though, was realizing that he must have double-dealt me about the _Annabelle_, too. If he wouldn't honor a five-thousand-credit contract he'd certainly balk at giving up a twenty-thousand-credit ship.

I broke all sprint records back to the spaceyards and slammed the _Annabelle's_ port practically in the faces of Captain Giles and a squad of patrolies who had been sent by Shanig to secure his latest acquisition.

Giles and his crew were yelling blue murder when I cut in the _Annabelle's_ jets. A moment later they were racing like mad to beat the apron-flash of the blastoff.

It was all my own fault, I told myself. I should have suspected that desk-pad-and-stylus snare of Shanig's--he had slipped a telewriter plate under my contract release, and when I signed it I signed another paper, by remote control, in another office. A paper that surrendered my smiley and also my equity in the _Annabelle_.

All I had now was a worthless check and a ship spaced in defiance of legal foreclosure. I'd be lucky, I figured, if I didn't owe Shanig a few thousand credits into the bargain.

* * * * *

I didn't hit for open space, knowing that Captain Giles would have a radar spotting-net out for me. Instead I swung the _Annabelle_ eastward and whizzed over Syrtis Major toward the abandoned oxygen-reduction plant where I had hidden Cora, my other smiley. I needed a hideout while I figured out a campaign to clear myself, and there was a flimsy old warehouse at the oxy-plant that would screen the _Annabelle_ nicely.

I scouted the desert carefully before drifting in for landing, and saw nothing but a great desolate ocean of gritty red sand. Back in the days when Earth was just beginning to cool off that desert might have been a landscape of sorts, but aeons of oxidation had changed all that. It was nothing now but a waste of powdered iron rust, sifted fine by a million winds and patterned by the feet of jackals.

The old reduction plant huddled in a wide, shallow depression made in years past by the scooping and hauling of sand to the converters. It reminded me of the ghost towns I had read of as a kid, before telemovies and stereo-spools replaced the old historical novels carried over from the twentieth century. It was never haunted by Indians and buffalo, but it had seen its share of jackals and sand snakes, and the wild, little, brown baboon-faced Marties of the deserts had smashed all its windows when the Earthies moved on.

Not many reduction plants were needed on Mars any more. The first homos to come had to wear atmosphere masks--a first-water paradox, because the rusty red deserts were full of good oxygen locked up in simple ferrous oxide form--but they soon changed that. When enough of them had come they set up atom-powered reduction plants by the hundreds, breaking the red sand back to its primal elements of iron and oxygen.

They used the iron in their first cities and they let the oxygen go free. Before the Big Jump there used to be arguments, I've heard, to the effect that Earthies could never live permanently on Mars because the air was too thin and oxygen-poor. But unlocking oxygen from the sand solved half the problem, and the other half never existed.

In the .38 gravity of Mars, any physical action requires only a fraction more than one-third as much effort as it would require on Earth. And only one-third as much oxygen is needed to sustain that effort.

So a hundred years after Earthmen abandoned the Syrtis Major plant, I had a perfect place to lick my wounds in privacy. I berthed the _Annabelle_ in the old warehouse, opened her up from bow to stern to let out the stink of stale tobacco smoke and machine oil, and brought my second smiley out of the dusty records vault where I had hidden her.

Cora was as affectionate as Joey and twice as eager. She made an earnest effort to hypnotize me with that euphoric mating call of hers, but when the khiff root kept me immune she settled down to staring wistfully across the desert toward Areopolis where Joey radiated back at her.

I broke out the emergency rations I lived on while prospecting the asteroids or moon-hopping, and sat down to think. I had to clear myself with Captain Giles or I'd never see Areopolis or the Argonaut Club again. I had to break Shanig's claim against the _Annabelle_ or I'd be an asteroid prospector without a ship. In other words, a bum.

And besides that I'd have to settle with Shanig for the slimy trick he had pulled on me or I'd be laughed out of the System. For some reason, considering that angle reminded me again of the unlikely old romances I'd read of the days when people rode horses and steam engines and chivvied buffalo around with red-hot stamping irons. They prospected for the rare earths--gold was a precious metal then, I think--and they had to keep their reputations as he-men intact or go down before the pellet guns of their fellow homos.

It seemed to me that things hadn't changed so much, after all. I had some small reputation of my own in the outlands, and if I let a wizened little credit-shark like Shanig beat me I was done for.

So I sat in front of the rickety old warehouse and munched my E-rations and thought about those things until finally, being the honest type, I had to admit that none of them mattered half as much as getting back to Areopolis and making another pitch at a streamlined redhead with scornful green eyes. There was still an outside chance that Cheryl Trayne might have phonovised me at the Argonaut Bar about that weekend on Phobos, and....

I was daydreaming about that when the shutter-speed sunset of Mars flicked away the day and left me sitting in darkness with the Syrtis Major wind sharp and cold on my face and the wild howling of desert jackals in my ears.