«Just forget about it, Mr. Dale,» he counseled. «We’ll make them in our factory on Mars and get them to you in plenty of time. There’s still six weeks left before the reunion and that will give us time to do a fancy job.»
The two shook hands and Mitchell left.
Pete leaned back in his chair and looked out through the yard-thick quartz of the dome which enclosed Satellite City, Ganymede’s only place of habitation. That is, if one didn’t consider Ganymede prison, which, technically speaking, probably was a place of habitation. Other than for the dome which enclosed Satellite City and the one which enclosed the prison, however, there was no sign of life on the entire moon, a worthless, lifeless globe only slightly smaller than the planet Mars.
He could see the top of the prison dome, just rising above the western horizon. To that Alcatraz of Space were sent only the most desperate of the Solar System’s criminals. The toughest prison in the entire system, its proud tradition was that not a single prisoner had escaped since its establishment twenty years before. Why risk escape, when only misery and death lurked outside the dome?
The Chamber of Commerce offices were located in the peak of the city’s dome and from his outer office, against the quartz, Pete had a clear view of the preparations going forward for the reunion which was to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Ganymede.
Far below, at the foot of the magnetically anchored dome, work was progressing on the vast outdoor arena, which would be enclosed in a separate dome, with heat and atmosphere pumped from the larger dome.
On one of the higher snow-swept hills, a short distance from the arena, reared a massive block of marble, swarming with space-armored sculptors.
That was the Battle Monument, to be dedicated in the opening ceremonies.
Drift snow, driven by the feeble winds which always stirred restlessly over the surface of this satellite from which the atmosphere was nearly gone, swept over the brown, rolling hills and eddied around the dome. It was cold out there. Pete shivered involuntarily. Down close to 180 degrees below, Fahrenheit. The snow was frozen carbon dioxide.
An inhospitable place to live, but Satellite City was one of the greatest resorts in the entire System. To it, each year, came thousands of celebrities, tens of thousands of common tourists. The guest lists of the better hotels read like the social register and every show house and cafe, every night club, every concession, every dive was making money.
And now the Ganymede reunion!
That had been a clever idea. It had taken some string-pulling back in London to get the Solar Congress to pass the resolution calling the reunion and to appropriate the necessary money. But that had not been too hard to do. Just a little ballyhoo about cementing Earth-Mars friendship for all eternity. Just a little clever work out in the lobbies.
This year Satellite City would pack them in, would get System-wide publicity, would become a household word on every planet.
He tilted farther back in his chair and stared at the sky. The greatest sight in the entire Solar System! Tourists came millions of miles to gaze in wonder at that sky.
Jupiter rode there against the black of space, a giant disk of orange and red, flattened at the poles, bulging at the equator. To the right of Jupiter was the sun, a small globe of white, its searing light and tremendous heat enfeebled by almost 500 million miles of space. Neither lo nor Europa were in sight, but against the velvet curtain of space glittered the brilliant, cold pin-points of distant stars.
Pete rocked back and forth in his chair, rubbing his hands gleefully.
«We’ll put Ganymede on the map this year,» he exulted.
«But I don’t want to go to Ganymede,» protested Senator Sherman Brown. «I hate space travel. Always get sick.»
Izzy Newman almost strangled in exasperation.
«Listen, senator,» he pleaded, «don’t be a damn fool all your life. We’re running you for president two years from now and you need them Martian votes. You can pick up plenty of them by going out to Ganymede and dedicating this battle monument. You can say some nice things about the Martians and then, quick, before the Earth boys get mad at you, you can say something nice about the Earth. And then you can praise the bravery of the men who fought in the battle and then, just to quiet down the pacifists, praise the forty years of peace we’ve had. And if you do that you’ll make everybody happy and everyone will think you are on their side. You’ll get a lot of votes.»
«But I don’t want to go,» protested the senator. «I won’t go. You can’t bulldoze me.»
Izzy spread his hands.
«Listen, senator,» he said. «I’m your manager, ain’t I? Have I ever given you the wrong steer yet? Have I ever done anything but good for you?
Didn’t I take you out of a one-horse county seat and make you one of the biggest men of your day?»
«Well,» said the senator, «I have done well by myself, if I do say so. And part of the credit goes to you. I hate to go to Ganymede. But if you think I should make—»
«Fine,» said Izzy, rubbing his hands together. «I’ll fix it all up for you. I’ll give the newspaper boys some interviews. I’ll have the best ghost writer fix you up a speech. We’ll get a half million votes out of this trip.»
He eyed Senator Brown sternly.
«There’s just two things you’ve got to do,» he warned.
«What’s that?»
«Learn your speech. I don’t want you forgetting it like you did the time you dedicated the communications building on the moon. And leave that damn candid camera at home.»
Senator Brown looked unhappy.
Ganymede was plunging into Jupiter’s shadow. For a time «night» would fall upon the satellite. Part of the time Europa would be in the sky, but Europa’s light would do little more than make the shadows of the surface deeper and darker.
«Spike» Cardy waited for Ganymede to swing into the shadow. For Spike was going to do something that no man had ever done before. He was going to escape from Ganymede prison, from this proud Alcatraz of Space, whose warden boasted that no man had ever left its dome alive until his time was served.
But Spike was leaving before his time was served. He was going to walk out the northwest port and disappear into the Ganymedean night as completely as if he had been wiped out of existence. It was all planned. The planning had been careful and had taken a long time. Spike had waited until he was sure there was no chance for a slip-up.
The plan had cost money, had called for pressure being exerted in the right spots, had called for outside assistance that was hard to get. But what others had failed to do, Spike Cardy had done. For was he not the old Spike Cardy of space-racket fame? Had he not for years levied toll upon the interplanetary lines? Were not his men still levying toll on the ships of space? Spike Cardy was tops in gangdom and even now his word was law to many men.
Spike waited until the guard paced past his cell. Then he moved swiftly to his bunk, mounted it and grasped the almost invisible wire of thin spun glass which was tied to one of the ventilator grids. Swiftly, but carefully, he hauled in the wire, taking care to make no noise. At the end of the wire, where it had hung down the ventilator pipe, was a flame pistol.
Like a cat stalking for a kill, Spike moved to the heavily barred cell door.
He thrust the pistol inside his shirt and slumped against the bars. He heard the guard returning on his beat.
Spike whimpered softly, as if he were in great pain. The guard heard the sound, his footsteps quickened.
«What’s the matter, Cardy? You sick?» asked the guard.
The gangster chief reached a feeble hand through the bars, clutching wildly at the guard’s shoulder. The guard leaned nearer. Cardy’s left hand moved like a striking snake, the steel fingers closing around the man’s throat. At the same instant the flame pistol, its charge screwed down to low power and a pencil point in diameter, flashed across the space between Cardy’s shirt and the guard’s heart. Just one little burst of white-hot flame, expertly aimed. Just one little chuckle out of the heat gun, like a man might chuckle at a joke. That was all.