“No, and it doesn’t quite add up. We’ve got enough on him to get Jupiter Equilateral pushed right out of the belt.”
They mentioned it to Johnny later. “Almost as though he had something up his sleeve,” Greg said.
Johnny chewed his lip thoughtfully. “His company has plenty of power on Mars. But with the three of us to testify, I don’t see how he has a chance.”
“I’d still feel better if we had the whole picture for the major,” Tom said. “We still don’t know what Dad found, or where he hid it.”
They slept on it, but the uneasiness grew. Tawney ignored them, staring at the image of the red planet on the view screen almost eagerly. Then, eight hours out of Sun Lake City a U.N. patrol ship appeared, moving toward them swiftly. “Intercepting orbit,” Greg said. “Looks like they were waiting for us.”
They watched as the big ship moved in to tangential orbit, matching its speed to theirs. Then Greg snapped the communicator switch. “Sound off,” he said cheerfully. “We’ve got a prize for you.”
“Stand by, we’re boarding you,” the patrol sent back. “And put your weapons aside.”
Four scooters broke from the side of the patrol ship. Greg activated the airlock. Five minutes later a man in patrol uniform with captain’s bars stepped into the control cabin, a stunner on ready in his hand. Three patrolmen came in behind him.
The captain looked around the cabin, saw Tawney, and took a deep breath. “Well, thank the stars you’re safe at any rate. Pete, Jimmy, take the controls.”
“Hold on,” Greg said. “We don’t need a pilot.”
The captain looked at hm. “Sorry, but we’re taking you in. There won’t be any trouble unless you make it. You three are under arrest, and I’m authorized to make it stick if I have to.”
They stared at him. Then Johnny said, “What are the charges?”
“You ought to know,” the captain said. “We have a formal complaint from the main offices of Jupiter Equilateral, charging you with piracy, murder, kidnaping of a company official, and totally wrecking a company orbit ship. I don’t quite see how you managed it, but we’re going to find out in short order.”
There was a stunned silence in the cabin, and then a sound came from the rear of the cabin that made the three of them turn.
Merrill Tawney was laughing.
Chapter Twelve
The Razor’s Edge
The room was small and drab, lit only by pale afternoon sunlight filtering in through the tiny windows. Tom had seen the internment rooms at the Sun Lake City space port before from the outside; from the inside, with the heavy door closed and bolted, things looked very much different. It seemed like hours since the captain had escorted them down the long corridor into the room. Actually only twenty minutes had crept by on the wall clock. They stared through the windows at the failing sunight, and wondered what was delaying the major.
Outside, the port was humming with activity. One of the great Jupiter Equilateral freighters had just finished loading its holds with a cargo of finished vanadium steel milling tools, bound for a dozen factories on Earth. The gantry cranes which had lifted the cartons into the afterholds of the ship were being moved away now, and preparations for blast-off began. At midnight, Mars time, one of the Earth-Mars orbit ships would reach its point of closest apposition to Mais. The freighter would be there to meet her, to unload the precious cargo for its long run to Earth.
Now a crew of power-pile men in their bright yellow uniforms went aboard to complete their check-over of the engines, to make certain that the fusion reaction that powered the freighter would develop the necessary thrust to lift it and its cargo against Mars’ gravitational pull, and to make sure too that those engines would cut off at the proper time. Still another crew moved around the perimeter of the radiation screen, ready with radiation detecting apparatus to make sure that none of the furiously radioactive backwash from the engines escaped from the tight circle of the damping screen to contaminate the surrounding field and buildings.
It was all very businesslike and efficient. Tom thought gloomily as he watched. Sim Lake City, Mars, was coming into its own as a city, not as a city of Earth, but as a city of the solar system. For a hundred years the Mars colonies had cost Earth-side taxpayers billions of dollars for their support. The cost of just establishing those colonies had been fantastic; it had cost even more to keep them going, to provide food and machinery and living space for the men and women who had come here.
But now, slowly, the tables were turning. An economy was developing on Mars, a mining economy. Like Alaska in the early days of its statehood, Mars had struggled to produce more than it cost, and now it was winning the struggle. Mars was beginning now to pay its own way, and more.
And in the future, what would Mars become? A place for the overflow of population from the huge Earth cities? A place to provide homes and work and a way of life for millions of humans who would soon have no place on Earth?
Perhaps. Tom thought of his one short visit to Earth, the last vacation trip his family had taken before the sickness came. He remembered the mammoth crowded city they had visited, stretching from Boston Sector in the north down to Richmond Sector in the south, and west almost to the borders of Greater Pittsburgh—one huge, teeming city rising in sky-scrapers almost to the sky, and digging deep into the ground. It had been an exciting place to see, but he knew now that it was only one of the sprawling cities that covered the Earth.
It was not a problem of enough food, or enough work—it was a problem of standing room. Another hundred years, and Earth would be bursting at the, seams. Even the most optimistic dreamers knew that when that time came, even Mars would not be enough. Mars and Venus together would not be enough. Even if the planetary engineers succeeded in turning Mars into a habitable planet for humans not requiring bubble-enclosed cities; even if they could change Venus from a poisonous hot-box into a warm tropical planet with plenty of oxygen and water, it would not be enough.
Tom turned away from the window, and looked up at the wall clock. How many people were born on Earth every minute? Greg was right when he said that Project Star-Jump was the only hope. The new land in the Amazon, in Greenland and Antarctica had been swallowed up in two decades. Mars and Venus would be swallowed up in a hundred years. The stars would have to be next. A place for men to escape. . . .
The thought of escape brought him back sharply. Half an hour now, and still no word from the major. From the moment the patrol crew had boarded them, everything had seemed like a bad dream. The shock of the arrest, the realization that the captain had been serious when he reeled off the charges lodged against them—they had been certain it was some kind of ill-planned joke until they saw the delegation of Jupiter Equilateral officials waiting at the port to greet Merrill Tawney like a man returned from the dead. They watched Tawney climb into the sleek company car and drive off toward the gate, while the captain escorted them without a word to the internment room.
True, they had not been stripped of their clothes and held under guard. No one had touched them. In fact, no one had spoken to them, or paid any attention to their protests. The U.N. officer at the desk checked their ID’s, jotted a note on the pad in front of him, and flipped the speaker switch to contact Major Briarton.
And now, angry and shaken, they were staring through the windows and waiting.
The door clicked, and the captain looked in. “All right, come along now,” he said.
“Is the major here?” Tom asked.
“You’ll see the major soon enough.” The captain herded them into another room, where a clerk efficiently fingerprinted them. Then they went down a ramp to a jitney platform, and boarded a U.N. official car. The trip into the city was slow; rush-hour traffic from the port was heavy. When they reached U.N. headquarters, there was another wait in an upper level anteroom. The captain stood stiffly with his hands behind his back and ignored them.