But then the image of C.C. rose in my mind, like a volcano of blubber about to erupt and spew over me. The best I could hope for was to admit I hadn’t been able to find Sam’s scam and let her demote me to third-rank sewer inspector or something even worse. If she ever got a hint that I had discovered Sam’s trick and let him go—I’d be breaking rocks on Farside myself.
There was only one honorable thing for me to do. After getting Sam’s solemn pledge that he would never, never tamper with the market again, I returned alone to Selene City and called in my resignation from the ISC.
C.C. called me back in ten seconds. I was in my spartan studio apartment, packing for my return to Earth, when the wall screen lit up. There she was, Mt. Vesuvius in the flesh, steaming and glowering at me.
“ ’E got to you, did ’e?” she said, without preamble.
“No,” I replied, trying to shield myself as much as I could behind my garment bag. “On the contrary, I think I scared him enough so that he’ll stay out of the market from now on.”
“Oh, really?” she said, dripping sarcasm.
“Really,” I said, with as much dignity as a man can muster while he’s holding a half-dozen pairs of under-drawers in his hands.
“Then it might interest you to know that one Samuel Gunn as just bought an entire factory ship’s cargo of ’eavy metals, ten minutes before the news of the ship’s successful rendezvous with nine different ore miners reached the bloody market.”
Sam had broken his promise! I was stunned. Not angry, just sad that he really couldn’t be trusted.
“Well,” I said, “you’ll have to send someone else to snoop out how he does it. I failed, and I’ve quit. I’m out of the game.”
“You’ll be out more than that, you bleedin’ traitor!” For the next several minutes C.C. described at the top of her voice how she was going to blackball me and see to it that I never worked anywhere on Earth again. “Or on the Moon, for that matter!” she added, with extra venom.
I was ruined and I knew it. But actually, what made me feel even worse was the knowledge that Sam had gone back on his word. He’d continue to fiddle with the market until C.C. finally caught him. He couldn’t get away with it forever; if I figured his scheme out (even with Sam’s help) someone else could, too. Sam was heading for jail, sooner or later. The thought depressed me terribly.
That was before Sam’s final message reached me.
I was heading glumly out to the rocket port for the ride back to Earth and my lonely, dusty, empty apartment in Florida’s sprawling Tampa-Orlando-Jacksonville industrial belt. No job and no prospects. No friends, either. Just about everyone I knew worked at the ISC. They would all shun me, fearful of C.C.’s wrath.
There were two messages waiting for me at the port’s check-in counter. The clerk there—a lissome young woman whom Sam had introduced me to scarcely a week earlier—showed me to a booth where I could take my messages in privacy.
The first was from someone I had never seen before. He was white-haired, with a trim beard and the tanned, leathery look of a man who had spent a good deal of his life outdoors. Yet he wore the rumpled tweeds of an academic.
“Mr. Hashimoto, this is rather a strange situation,” he said into the camera. He was recording the message, not knowing where I was or when I would hear his words. “I am Hickory J. Gillett, dean of the University of New Mexico Archeology Department. We have just received a bequest of two hundred million dollars from an anonymous donor who wants us to create an endowed chair of archeology. His only requirement is that you accept the position as our first Professor of Martian Archeology.”
I nearly fainted. Professor of Martian Archeology. Endowed chair. It was my dream come true.
Hardly conscious of what I was doing, I touched the keypad for my second message.
Sam Gunn’s impish face grinned at me from the screen. “So I pulled off one final stunt,” he said. “See you on Mars, Prof. Save one of the female students for me.”
And he slashed one pointed finger through the air in the zigzag of a letter zee.
The Maitre D’
“It’s a pleasure having someone so famous on board with us,” said the maitre d’ as he showed Jade and Spence to their table in Hermes s small but luxuriously decorated dining salon.
“Me?” Jade felt surprised. “I’m not famous. Not like Senator Meyers.”
The maitre d’ smiled patiently. He was a portly man, his hair receding from his forehead but still dark, as was his trim mustache and pointed Vandyke. Aside from the cooks, he was the only human working in the dining salon. The waiters were all utilitarian robots, their flat tops exactly the same height as the tables. They rolled noiselessly across the carpeting on tiny trunions.
“You are the producer of the Sam Gunn biography, aren’t you?” he asked in a deferential, sibilant near-whisper.
“Yes, that’s true,” Jade replied as she sat on the chair he was holding for her.
“I knew Sam,” the maitre d’ said. “And Senator Meyers, too, although she doesn’t recognize me. I looked somewhat different back in those days.”
Jade recognized a come-on. “You’ll have to tell me about it,” she said guardedly.
Glancing about at the salon’s six tables, all of them filled with passengers, the maitre d’ said, “Perhaps after dinner? You could linger over a cognac and after these other guests have left I could tell you about it.”
Jade glanced at Spence, who was scowling suspiciously.
“All right,” she said. “After dinner.”
The maitre d’ bowed politely and left their table.
“You trust him?” Spence asked, almost in a growl.
“You don’t?”
“He’s too oily for my taste.”
Jade laughed softly. “We’re not going to eat him, Spence. Just listen to what he has to say.”
Spence nodded, but he still did not seem happy about it.
Their dinner was excellent. Jill Meyers stopped at their table on her way out and for a few moments Jade was afraid that the former Senator would invite herself for an after-dinner drink. But she left soon enough and Jade saw that she and Spence were the only guests remaining in the salon.
The maitre d’ came to their table with a magnum of cognac in one hand and three snifters in the other. He had pulled his black tie loose and unbuttoned his collar.
“If I may?” he asked.
“Please do,” said Jade, gesturing to the empty chair he was standing by.
As the man put the bottle and glasses down on the table and pulled out the chair, Spence asked, “So when did you know Sam?”
The Flying Dutchman
It was a long time ago—said the maitre d’ as he poured cognac into the snifters. I was working for Sam at the L-5 habitat Beethoven. Of course, there was a beautiful woman right in the middle of everything.
I ushered her into Sam’s office and helped her out of the bulky dark coat she was wearing. Once she let the hood fall back I damned near dropped the coat. I recognized her. Who could forget her? She was exquisite, so stunningly beautiful that even irrepressible Sam Gunn was struck speechless. More beautiful than any woman I had ever seen.
But haunted.
It was more than her big, soulful eyes. More than the almost frightened way she had of glancing all around as she entered Sam’s office, as if expecting someone to leap out of hiding at her. She looked tragic, lovely and doomed and tragic.
“Mr. Gunn, I need your help,” she said to Sam. Those were the first words she spoke, even before she took the chair that I was holding for her. Her voice was like the sigh of a breeze in a midnight forest.