American Science Fiction Five Classic Novels 1956-58 Read Online Free PDF Page A

made about me.
    Dak saw to it that we climbed out of the capsule together, else I would have slammed it shut and gone elsewhere at once. I pretended not to notice and stuck close as a puppy to him as we went up the belt to the main hall just under the surface, coming out between the Pan-Am desk and American Skylines. Dak headed straight across the waiting-room floor toward Diana, Ltd., and I surmised that he was going to buy tickets for the Moon shuttle—how he planned to get me aboard without passport or vaccination certificate I could not guess but I knew that he was resourceful. I decided that I would fade into the furniture while he had his wallet out; when a man counts money there are at least a few seconds when his eyes and attention are fully occupied.
    But we went right on past the Diana desk and through an archway marked Private Berths . The passageway beyond was not crowded and the walls were blank; I realized with dismay that I had let slip my best chance, back there in the busy main hall. I held back. “Dak? Are we making a jump?”
    “Of course.”
    “Dak, you’re crazy. I’ve got no papers, I don’t even have a tourist card for the Moon.”
    “You won’t need them.”
    “Huh? They’ll stop me at ‘Emigration.’ Then a big, beefy cop will start asking questions.”
    A hand about the size of a cat closed on my upper arm. “Let’s not waste time. Why should you go through ‘Emigration,’ when officially you aren’t leaving? And why should I, when officially I never arrived? Quick-march, old son.”
    I am well muscled and not small, but I felt as if a traffic robot were pulling me out of a danger zone. I saw a sign reading MEN and I made a desperate attempt to break it up. “Dak, half a minute, please. Got to see a man about the plumbing.”
    He grinned at me. “Oh, yes? You went just before we left the hotel.” He did not slow up or let go of me.
    “Kidney trouble——”
    “Lorenzo old son, I smell a case of cold feet. Tell you what I’ll do. See that cop up ahead?” At the end of the corridor, in the private berths station, a defender of the peace was resting his big feet by leaning over a counter. “I find I have a sudden attack of conscience. I feel a need to confess—about how you killed a visiting Martian and two local citizens—about how you held a gun on me and forced me to help you dispose of the bodies. About——”
    “You’re crazy!”
    “Almost out of my mind with anguish and remorse, shipmate.”
    “But—you’ve got nothing on me.”
    “So? I think my story will sound more convincing than yours. I know what it is all about and you don’t. I know all about you and you know nothing about me. For example . . .” He mentioned a couple of details in my past that I would have sworn were buried and forgotten. All right, so I did have a couple of routines useful for stag shows that are not for the family trade—a man has to eat. But that matter about Bebe; that was hardly fair, for I certainly had not known that she was underage. As for that hotel bill, while it is true that bilking an “innkeeper” in Miami Beach carries much the same punishment as armed robbery elsewhere, it is a very provincial attitude —I would have paid if I had had the money. As for that unfortunate incident in Seattle—well, what I am trying to say is that Dak did know an amazing amount about my background but he had the wrong slant on most of it. Still . .
    “So,” he continued, “let’s walk right up to yon gendarme and make a clean breast of it. I’ll lay you seven to two as to which one of us is out on bail first.”
    So we marched up to the cop and on past him. He was talking to a female clerk back of the railing and neither one of them looked up. Dak took out two tickets reading, GATE PASS— MAINTENANCE PERMIT—Berth K127, and stuck them into the monitor. The machine scanned them, a transparency directed us to take an upper-level car, code King 127; the gate let us through and