I’ve been pushed around too long, he thought. I ought to fight back a little. Somehow.
Consumer Sixth Class Carman was on the verge of changing the course of his life. An hour more passed, and 193 additional passport applications disappeared into bins. Finally, he made up his mind to act.
The recruiting officer was a spade-faced, dark-complexioned man with angular features and bright white teeth. He wore the green-and-gold uniform of the United Military Services of Earth. He stared levelly across his shining bare desk at Carman and said, “Would you mind repeating that?”
“I said I wanted to fight. Against Sirius.”
The recruiting officer frowned ponderously. After a long pause he said, “I don’t see how I can guarantee that. We enroll you; the computer ships you out. Whether you get sent to the war zone or not depends on a variable complex of factors which certainly no civilian should be expected to understand.” He shoved a form across the desk toward Carman. “If you’ll fill this out, Mac, we can—”
“No,” Carman said. “I want a guarantee that I’ll see action in the Sirius sector. Dammit, Lieutenant—”
“Sergeant.”
“—Sergeant, I’m thirty-three. I’m as close to being nobody as anybody can get. If I’m lucky I’ll get as high as Third Class someday. I’ve saved ten thousand bucks, and I suppose the new inflation’s going to knock my savings in half the way the last one did.”
“Mr. Carman, I don’t see how all this—”
“You will. For thirty-three years I’ve been sitting around on the home front going up and down with each economic spiral while Earth fights wars in Procyon and Proxima C and half a dozen other places. I’m tired of staying home. I want to enlist.”
“Sure, Mac, but—”
“But I don’t want to enlist just to wear a uniform and police the frontiers on Betelgeuse. I want to go to Sirius, and I want to fight. Once in my life I want to engage in positive action on behalf of a Cause.” Carman took a deep breath; he hadn’t spoken this many words in succession in a long, long time. “Do you understand now? Will you guarantee that I’ll be shipped to Sirius if I sign up?”
The sergeant exhaled deeply, unhappily. “I’ve explained twice that the matter’s not in my hands. Maybe I could attach a recommendation—”
“A guarantee.”
“But—” A crafty light appeared in the recruiting sergeant’s eyes; he drummed the desktop momentarily and said, “You’re a very persistent man, Mac. You win; I’ll see you get assigned to the war zone. Now, why don’t you just sign your name here—”
Carman shook his head. “No, thanks. I just changed my mind.”
Before the sergeant could protest, Carman had backed warily out of the office and was gone. It had abruptly occurred to him that a recruiting officer’s promise was not necessarily final. And there were more direct methods he could use to get into the war.
He returned to the Passport Office at 1313, and the robot eye at the office door took note of it, clicking loudly as he passed through. Ordinarily Carman would have groaned at the loss of thirteen minutes’ pay, but, then, ordinarily he would have been at his desk promptly at 1300 anyway.
Everyone else was busily at work; heads bowed, hands groping madly for the incoming applications, his fellow sorters presented an oddly ludicrous sight. Carman resumed his place. Nearly a hundred waiting permits had stacked themselves in the receiving tray during his absence—but this, too, hardly troubled him now.
He went through them at a frantic pace, occasionally hitting as high as twenty per minute. Plenty of them were going to the wrong bins, he realized, but this was no time to worry about that. He caught up with the posting department in less than forty minutes, and made use of his first eight-second breather to draw a blank passport application from his desk drawer; he had always kept a few on hand there.
He filled out the blank patiently, in eight-second bursts between each of the arrivals from above. Where it said Name and Status, he wrote Consumer Sixth Class David Carman. Where it said Intended Destination, he inscribed Sirius VII in tidy cursives. Sirius VII was outside the war zone, and so theoretically within reach of commercial traffic, but passports to anywhere in the Sirius system were granted only by special dispensation since the outbreak of hostilities, and Carman knew he had small chance of receiving such dispensation.
Which was why, after the form was completely filled out, he thoughtfully scribbled an expert forgery of the Secretary of Extraterrestrial Affairs’ signature on the bottom of the sheet, okaying the application. Humming gently, he dropped the completed blank into the bin labeled 82g and returned his attention to the labors of the day.
The passport took eight days to come through. Carman had some uneasy moments while waiting, though he was ultimately confident of success. After all, the workers who processed the sorted applications and issued the passports probably handled their work as mechanically and hastily as he did in the level above them—and he never had time to check for possible forgeries, so why should they? Never-ending cascades of passport applications descended on them; probably they cursed him for working so fast, just as he in turn scowled up the chute at the girl in the top level.
Five seconds after the passport to Sirius dropped out of his mail chute, Carman was on the phone talking to the secretary of the Personnel Chief at the Passport Office.
“Yes, I said Carman. David Carman, Sixth Class. I’ve enlisted in the Services and my resignation is effective today. Yes, today. My pay check? Oh, burn it,” Carman said impatiently, and hung up. So much for past associations.
Carman withdrew his entire savings—$9,783.61. The roboteller handed over the cash without comment. Carman took the thick pile of crisp bills, counted slowly through them to the great annoyance of the people behind him in line, and nudged the acknowledge stud to let the teller know the transaction was complete. Outside the bank, he signaled for another copter and took it to the I Upper Urbdistrict Spaceport, far out on what had once been Long Island.
“A ticket to Sirius?” the dispatcher asked, after the I robot ticket vender had passed Carman on to him in perplexity. “But the war, you know—we’ve curtailed our service to that entire sector.”
“I don’t care,” Carman said stolidly. He was growing accustomed to being forceful now; it came easily to him, and he enjoyed it. “You advertise through transportation to Sirius VII. I’ve got a passport that says I can go there, and I’ve got six thousand dollars to pay my way. Cash.”
“This is very irregular,” moaned the dispatcher, a short harried-looking little man. “We discontinued passenger service to that system eight months ago, when—”
“You could lose your franchise for this,” Carman snapped bluntly. “Sirius VII is nonbelligerent. I have money and a passport. I demand transportation.”
In the end, they diverted a freight run bound for Deneb, and put Carman aboard with the promise that they’d drop him at Sirius VII. His passport was in order, and he had the cash for the payment.
The trip took three weeks of steady hyperdrive travel. Six other humans were on board, all bad-smelling crewmen, and the crew of a space freighter is hardly pleasant company on a three-week journey. Carman kept to himself, inventing a form of solitaire he could play making use of hundred-dollar bills, of which he had more than thirty left even after paying passage. The ship’s cargo consisted of steers slated for an agrarian colony orbiting Deneb, and Carman lived in a cramped cabin just aft of the cargo hold. He got little sleep.
They put him down finally on the concrete landing apron at Zuorf, crown city of Sirius VII, on the fifth day of 2672, having first radioed the Terran consul there to let them know he was coming. Biggest and muggiest of the twelve planets that circled the dog star, Sirius VII was a vast mountainous world with ugly sprawling cities crammed between the jagged peaks; its people were brawny ursinoids, not long escaped from their neolithic culture stage.