Then, some six months after the Senator’s visit, when it looked as if Sam had run out of time and excuses to keep me in the Shack and I would have to pack my meager bag and head down the gravity well to spend the rest of my miserable days in some overcrowded ghetto city, Sam came prancing weightlessly into my microminiaturized living quarters, waving a flimsy sheet of paper.
«What’s that?» I knew it was a straight line, but he wasn’t going to tell me unless I asked.
«A new law.» He was smirking, canary feathers all over his chin.
«First time I ever seen you happy about some new regulation.»
«Not a regulation,» he corrected me. «A law. A federal law, duly passed by the U.S. Congress and just signed today by the President.»
I wanted to play it cool, but he had me too curious. «What’s it say? Why’s it so important?»
«It says,» he made a flourish that sent him drifting slowly toward the ceiling as he read, «No person residing aboard a space facility owned by the United States or by a corporation or other legal entity licensed by the United States may be compelled to leave said facility without due process of law.»
My reply was something profound, like, «Huh?»
His scrungy little face beaming, Sam said, «It means that Global can’t force you back Earthside! As long as you can pay the rent, Omar, they can’t evict you.»
«You joking?» I couldn’t believe it.
«No joke. I helped write this masterpiece, kiddo,» he told me. «Remember when old Senator Winnebago was up here last year?»
The Senator was from Wisconsin, but his name was not Winnebago. He had been a powerful enemy of the space program—until his doctors told him that degenerative arthritis was going to make him a pain-racked cripple unless he could live in a low-gee environment. All of a sudden he became a big space freak. His visit to the Shack had proved what his doctors had told him: in zero gee the pains that hobbled him disappeared and he felt twenty years younger. That’s when Sam convinced him to sponsor the «pay your own way» law, which provided that neither the government nor a private company operating a space facility could force a resident out as long as he or she was able to pay the going rate for accommodations.
«Hell, they’ve got laws that protect tenants from eviction in New York and every other city,» Sam said. «Why not here?»
I was damned glad of it. Overjoyed, in fact. It meant that I could stay, that I wouldn’t be forced to go back Earthside and drag myself around at my full weight. What I didn’t realize at the time, of course, was that Sam would eventually have to use that law for himself. Obviously, he had seen ahead far enough to know that he would need such protection, sooner or later. Did he get the law written for his own selfish purposes? Sure he did. But it served my purpose, too, and Sam knew that when he was bending the Senator’s tin ear. That was good enough for me. Still is.
For the better part of another year I served as Sam’s legman—a job I found interesting and amusingly ironic. I shuttled back and forth from the Shack to Alpha, generally to meet big-shot business persons visiting the Big Wheel. When Sam was officially on duty for Global, which was most of the time, he’d send me over to Alpha to meet the visitors, settle them down, and talk to them about the money that a tourist facility would make. I would just try to keep them happy until Sam could shake loose and come over to meet them himself. Then he would weave a golden web of words, describing how fantastic an orbital tourist facility would be, bobbing weightlessly around the room in his enthusiasm, pulling numbers out of the air to show how indecently huge would be the profit that investors would make.
«And the biggest investors will get their own suites, all for themselves,» Sam promised, «complete with every luxury—and every service that the staff can provide.»
He would wink hard enough to dislocate an eyelid at that point, to make certain the prospective investor knew what he meant.
I met some pretty interesting people that way: Texas millionaires, Wall Street financiers, Hollywood sharks, a couple of bullnecked types I thought might be Mafia but turned out to be in the book and magazine distribution business, even a few very nice young ladies who were looking for «good causes» in which to invest. Sam did not spare them his «every service that the staff can provide» line, together with the wink. They giggled and blushed.
«It’s gonna happen!» Sam kept saying. Each time we met a prospective backer his enthusiasm rose to a new pitch. No matter how many times the prospect eventually turned sour, no matter how often we were disappointed, Sam never lost his faith in the idea or in the inevitability of its fruition.
«It’s gonna happen, Omar. We’re going to create the first tourist hotel in space. And you’re going to have a share of it, pal. Mark my words.»
When we finally got a tentative approval from a consortium of Greek and Italian shipping people, Sam nearly rocked the old Shack out of orbit. He whooped and hollered and zoomed around the place like a crazy billiard ball. He threw a monumental party for everybody in the Shack, doctors, nurses, patients, technicians, administrative staff, security guards, visitors, and even the one consultant who lived there: me. Where he got the caviar and fresh Brie and other stuff, I still don’t know. But it was a party none of us will ever forget. It started Saturday at five p.m., the close of the official workweek. It ended, officially, Monday at eight a.m. There are those who believe, though, that it’s still going on over there at the Shack.
Several couples sort of disappeared during the party. The Shack isn’t so big that people can get lost in it, but they just seemed to vanish. Most of them showed up, looking tired and sheepish, by Monday morning. Three of those couples eventually got married. One pair of them was stopped by a security guard when they tried to go out an air lock while stark naked.
Sam himself engaged in a bit of EVA with one of the nurses, a tiny little elf of fragile beauty and uncommon bravery. She snuggled into a pressure suit with Sam, and the two of them made several orbits around the Shack, outside, propelled by nothing more than their own frenetic pulsations and Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
Two days after the party, however, the Beryllium Blonde showed up.
Her real name was Jennifer Marlow, and she was as splendidly beautiful as a woman can be. A figure right out of a high school boy’s wettest dreams. A perfect face, with eyes of china blue and thickly glorious hair like a crown of shining gold. She staggered every male who saw her, she stunned even me, and she sent Sam into a complete tailspin.
To top things off, she was Global Technology’s ace troubleshooter. Her official title was Administrative Assistant (Special Projects) to the President. The word we got from Earthside was that she had a mind like a steel trap, and a vagina much the same.
The official reason for her visit was to discuss Sam’s letter of resignation with him.
«You stay right beside me,» Sam insisted as we drifted down the Shack’s central corridor, toward the old conference room. «I won’t be able to control myself if I’m in there alone with her.»
His face was as white as the Moon’s. He looked like a man in shock.
«Will you be able to control yourself with me in there?» I wondered.
«If I can’t, rap me on the head. Knock me out. Give me a Vulcan nerve pinch. Anything! Just don’t let me go zonkers over her.»
I smiled.
«I’m not kidding, Omar!» Sam insisted. «Why do you think they sent her up here, instead of some flunky? They know I’m susceptible. God knows how many scalps she’s got nailed to her teepee.»