“But is it something serious?”
“Don’t know. But don’t worry about it. You go up to the apartment and make yourself comfortable. Maybe we can have time to talk later. After all, we’ve got a lot to catch up on, and darned little time to do it!”
Tuck managed a wan smile, and followed his father’s tall figure out to the street. It seemed so unfair, he thought bitterly. There were plenty of Security Commission officers—why must they choose his father for a mission like this? A surface car approached as they reached the street, and Tuck climbed aboard, watching his father’s taxi speed out into the Middle Level Thoroughfare downtown.
Ordinarily Tuck would have been excited to be in the city again. He was always thrilled by the tall white towers and the flashing monorails; this was the great business center of the Western World, built to handle the seventeen million people who daily filled the helicopter lanes and Rolling Roads coming into the city. Down on the Lower Level the trucks and busses hummed, the turbines turned, the machinery of the city roared without rest, day and night. Here in the Middle Level were the main highways and monorail trains, and high up above Tuck could glimpse the green terraces and lighted boulevards of the Upper Level, the homes and hotels and apartments, the green parks and the starlighted roofs. Once New York City had been a city of dirt and gloom, of congested traffic and decaying slums. But Solar energy with its great power had made the slums and traffic a thing of the remote past. The city was handsome now, but as the surface car switched to monorail for the Upper Level, Tuck hardly saw the city around him. His mind was filled with anger and bitter disappointment—with a tinge of apprehension thrown in. Titan was a cruel world, so far from Earth, so remote that almost anything might happen. Suppose the trouble was greater than his father suspected? If something went wrong, the Colonel would have little to defend him. And Tuck knew that the laws of common decency would never apply in a sinkhole like the Titan colony.
The car swung out between the rising buildings, and moved swiftly up the open avenue. After a few miles of swift travel, the car left the ground contact, and moved into a neat spiral curve, rising higher and higher, until the open air was overhead. Then the car settled out on the Upper Level rails, and far ahead Tuck could see their apartment building, one of the great towers rising up from the growing darkness below.
The doorman recognized him at once, and welcomed him with open arms. The sight of him cheered Tuck a little. Yes, the apartment was just as he had left it, and his bags had been already sent up. And the Colonel had called, leaving a number where he could be reached if necessary. Tuck walked into the foyer he remembered so well, and soon was zooming up in the elevator to the place he had always known as home.
But happy as he was to see the old familiar places, doubt continued to plague him. The tales he had heard about the mining colony on Titan were hard to forget. He could remember, as a little boy, seeing the crowd of miners and their families, loading aboard one of the great outbound rockets, a drab, surly, mean-looking crew, huddling around their cloth-bound bundles of possessions, their eyes downcast and bitter. His father had explained to him that these people were going out to Titan, the sixth moon of Saturn, and he had been so frightened by their fierce appearance that he had started to cry. He knew now that Titan had not been a penal colony for over a hundred and fifty years, but surely those people must have been desperate. All his life he could remember hearing about the trouble in the mines—murders, piracy, rebellion. And now his father was to go there, to be the only Earthman on the satellite, with the exception of his rocket-ship’s crew—
He passed down the bright corridor, stopped before the door to the apartment, and placed his hand palm down on a shiny metal strip. The admittance panel had been activated to his handprint when he was barely tall enough to reach it; presently the door swung open, and he walked into the darkening apartment, forgetting his doubts in the excitement of being home again.
It was just the same as he remembered it—the entrance, the living-room office, with his father’s desk in the corner, complete with visiphone, talkwriter, and the unopened stack of the day’s mail, already flooding in, although the Colonel had been home just a day. Tuck crossed the room, and regarded himself in the full-length mirror. He was taller by four inches than he had been the last time he had stood there, and his face was older, more mature, even bearing witness to a somewhat inexpert job of shaving—but the brown hair still stood up in the back, and there was still the wry twinkle in his steady eyes. Not too much change, after all, he thought. He hurried to the window then, threw open the curtains, and stared down at the picture that had always fascinated him, the glowing, beautiful, ever-changing vista of the city at night.
It was fine to be home. Anytime he wanted, during holidays, or whenever he wanted a weekend of rest from his studies, he could come back here. But once the ship blasted for Titan, his father couldn’t return again until the job was done, and he was ready for the long trip home—
A cold thought passed through Tuck’s mind, and he stopped, coat in hand, staring at the pleasant room. It was a horrible thought, but something deep in his mind was saying over and over: Suppose he never comes home again? Suppose he’s in real danger, suppose he doesn’t realize how dangerous the mission is—Tuck snorted angrily, and hung his coat in the entranceway. It was ridiculous to think such things. Probably the rumors had been exaggerated all out of proportion to the truth. Anyway, there was no sense thinking about it. He had made his decision, and he would stick by it. And above all, he would get his mind off such nasty speculations. In another day he would be on his way to the Exhibition in Catskill, and he’d have a wonderful reunion with his father in the meantime.
But somehow the prospect of the Exhibition wasn’t as exciting as it had been. He walked restlessly about the room, then picked up the pile of letters on his father’s desk, and began leafing through them, idly. Possibly some mail had come for him. There was a bill or two, an advertising circular, a large packet from some General, a letter—
Tuck froze, staring at the letter, his heart pounding in his throat. It was an ordinary envelope, small and compact, with the address neatly typed near the center: “Colonel Robert Benedict, 37 West 430th Street, Apartment 944B, Upper New York City, New York.” An innocent-looking envelope, just like any one of a dozen his father might receive—
But on the return address was Tuck’s own name—Tuck sank down in the chair, staring at the envelope. He hadn’t written any letter. He hadn’t even known that his father would be home. And yet the return read, “Tucker Benedict, Polytechnic Academy School.” and the postmark said Palomar, California—
His heart was thumping wildly, and he held the envelope up to the light, tried to make out its contents, but he could see nothing but a dark, opaque rectangle. On impulse he started to pull the plastic opener-tab; then something screamed a warning in his mind. With trembling fingers he held the letter up, staring closely at the opener-tab, just a little piece of plastic, so simple to pull to open the end of the envelope—
Like a cat, Tuck was across the room, fumbling for a razor in his fathers desk. In a few seconds he was carefully slitting the envelope down the end opposite the opener, desperately careful not to touch the contents. The end of the envelope fell open, and he stared in horror at the dull green, slightly luminous plaque inside—
With a cry he carried the envelope at arm’s length into the washroom, poured the basin full of water, and dumped the envelope, contents and all, into the water. The green stuff in the envelope crumbled, lost its shape, and became a pasty green-black, evil-looking glob. Tuck ran the water out, and standing as far away as possible, touched a match to the glob.