“No good, huh?”
“Eh? What? It smells—but I think I can use it. Stevenson did something like it in Treasure Island—and I think he got it from Homer. Let’s see; if we—” He again went into his trance.
Pollux had opened the warming cupboard. Castor dropped his baby brother on the floor and accepted a dinner pack from his twin. He opened it. “Meat pie again,” he stated bleakly and sniffed it. “Synthetic, too.”
“Say that over again and louder,” his sister urged him. “I’ve been trying for weeks to get Mother to subscribe to another restaurant.”
“Don’t talk, Meade,” Dr. Stone answered. “I’m modelling your mouth.”
Grandmother Stone snorted. “You youngsters have it too easy. When I came to the Moon there was a time when we had nothing but soya beans and coffee powder for three months.”
Meade answered, “Hazel, the last time you told us about that it was two months and it was tea instead of coffee.”
“Young lady, who’s telling this lie? You, or me?” Hazel stood up and came over to her twin grandsons. “What were you two doing on Dan Ekizian’s lot?”
Castor looked at Pollux, who looked back. Castor said cautiously, “Who told you that we were there?”
“Don’t try to kid your grandmother. When you have been on—”
The entire family joined her in chorus: “‘—on the Moon as long as I have!’”
Hazel sniffed. “Sometimes I wonder why I married!”
Her son said, “Don’t try to answer that question,” then continued to his sons, “Well, what were you doing there?”
Castor consulted Pollux by eye, then answered, “Well, Dad, it’s like this—”
His father nodded. “Your best flights of imagination always start that way. Attend carefully, everybody.”
“Well, you know that money you are holding for us?”
“What about it?”
“Three per cent isn’t very much.”
Mr. Stone shook his head vigorously. “I will not invest your royalties in some wildcat stock. Financial genius may have skipped my generation but when I turn that money over to you, it will be intact.”
“That’s just it. It worries you. You could turn it over to us now and quit worrying about it.”
“No. You are too young.”
“We weren’t too young to earn it.”
His mother snickered. “They got you, Roger. Come here and I’ll see if I can staunch the blood.”
Dr. Stone said serenely, “Don’t heckle Roger when he is coping with the twins, Mother. Meade, turn a little to the left.”
Mr. Stone answered, “You’ve got a point there, Cas. But you may still be too young to hang on to it. What is this leading up to?”
Castor signalled with his eyes; Pollux took over. “Dad, we’ve got a really swell chance to take that money and put it to work. Not a wildcat stock, not a stock at all. We’ll have every penny right where we can see it, right where we could cash in on it at any time. And in the meantime we’ll be making lots more money.”
“Hmmm…how?”
“We buy a ship and put it to work.”
His father opened his mouth; Castor cut in swiftly, “We can pick up a Detroiter VII cheap and overhaul it ourselves; we won’t be out a cent for wages.”
Pollux filled in without a break. “You’ve said yourself, Dad, that we are both born mechanics; we’ve got the hands for it.”
Castor went on, “We’d treat it like a baby because it would be our own.”
Pollux: “We’ve both got both certificates, control and power. We wouldn’t need any crew.”
Castor: “No overhead—that’s the beauty of it.”
Pollux: “So we carry trade goods out to the Asteroids and we bring back a load of high-grade. We can’t lose.”
Castor: “Four hundred percent, maybe five hundred.”
Pollux: “More like six hundred.”
Castor: “And no worries for you.”
Pollux: “And we’d be out of your hair.”
Castor: “Not late for dinner.”
Pollux had his mouth open when his father again yelled, “QUIET!” He went on, “Edith, bring the barrel. This time we use it.” Mr. Stone had a theory, often expressed, that boys should be raised in a barrel and fed through the bunghole. The barrel had no physical existence.
Dr. Stone said, “Yes, dear,” and went on modelling.
Grandmother Stone said, “Don’t waste your money on a Detroiter. They’re unstable; the gyro system is no good. Wouldn’t have one as a gift. Get a Douglas.”
Mr. Stone turned to his mother. “Hazel, if you are going to encourage the boys in this nonsense—”
“Not at all! Not at all! Merely intellectual discussion. Now with a Douglas they could make some money. A Douglas has a very favorable—”
“Hazel!”
His mother broke off, then said thoughtfully, as if to herself, “I know there is free speech on the Moon: I wrote it into the charter myself.”
Roger Stone turned back to his sons. “See here, boys—when the Chamber of Commerce decided to include pilot training in their Youth-Welfare program I was all for it. I even favored it when they decided to issue junior licenses to anybody who graduated high in the course. When you two got your jets I was proud as could be. It’s a young man’s game; they license commercial pilots at eighteen and—”
“And they retire them at thirty,” added Castor. “We haven’t any time to waste. We’ll be too old for the game before you know it.”
“Pipe down. I’ll do the talking for a bit. If you think I’m going to draw that money out of the bank and let you two young yahoos go gallivanting around the system in a pile of sky junk that will probably blow the first time you go over two g’s, you had better try another think. Besides, you’re going down to Earth for school next September.”
“We’ve been to Earth,” answered Castor.
“And we didn’t like it,” added Pollux.
“Too dirty.”
“Likewise too noisy.”
“Groundhogs everywhere,” Castor finished.
Mr. Stone brushed it aside. “Two weeks you were there—not time enough to find out what the place is like. You’ll love it, once you get used to it. Learn to ride horseback, play baseball, see the ocean.”
“A lot of impure water,” Castor answered.
“Horses are to eat.”
“Take baseball,” Castor continued. “It’s not practical. How can you figure a one-g trajectory and place your hand at the point of contact in the free-flight time between bases? We’re not miracle men.”
“I played it.”
“But you grew up in a one-g field; you’ve got a distorted notion of physics. Anyhow, why would we want to learn to play baseball? When we come back, we wouldn’t be able to play it here. Why, you might crack your helmet.”
Mr. Stone shook his head. “Games aren’t the point. Play baseball or not, as suits you. But you should get an education.”
“What does Luna City Technical lack that we need? And if so, why? After all, Dad, you were on the Board of Education.”
“I was not; I was mayor.”
“Which made you a member ex-officio—Hazel told us.”
Mr. Stone glanced at his mother; she was looking elsewhere. He went on, “Tech is a good school, of its sort, but we don’t pretend to offer everything at Tech. After all, the Moon is still an outpost, a frontier—”
“But you said,” Pollux interrupted, “in your retiring speech as mayor, that Luna City was the Athens of the future and the hope of the new age.”
“Poetic license. Tech is still not Harvard. Don’t you boys want to see the world’s great works of art? Don’t you want to study the world’s great literature?”
“We’ve read Ivanhoe,” said Castor.
“And we don’t want to read The Mill on the Floss,” added Pollux.
“We prefer your stuff.”
“My stuff? My stuff isn’t literature.
It’s more of an animated comic strip.”
“We like it,” Castor said firmly.
His father took a deep breath. “Thank you. Which reminds me that I still have a full episode to sweat out tonight, so I will cut this discussion short. In the first place you can’t touch the money without my thumbprint—from now on I am going to wear gloves. In the second place both of you are too young for an unlimited license.”
“You could get us a waiver for out-system. When we got back we’d probably be old enough for unlimited.”
“You’re too young!”
Castor said, “Why, Dad, not half an hour ago you accepted a gimmick from me in which you were going to have an eleven-year-old kid driving a ship.”
“I’ll raise his age!”
“It’ll ruin your gimmick.”
“Confound it! That’s just fiction—and poor fiction at that. It’s hokum, dreamed up to sell merchandise.” He suddenly looked suspiciously at his son. “Cas, you planted that gimmick on me. Just to give yourself an argument in favor of this harebrained scheme—didn’t you?”
Castor looked pious. “Why, Father, how could you think such a thing?”
“Don’t ‘Father’ me! I can tell a hawk from a handsaw.”
“Anybody can,” Grandmother Hazel commented. “The Hawk class is a purely commercial type while the Hanshaw runabout is a sport job. Come to think about it, boys, a Hanshaw might be better than a Douglas. I like its fractional controls and—”
“Hazel!” snapped her son. “Quit encouraging the boys. And quit showing off. You’re not the only engineer in the family.”
“I’m the only good one,” she answered smugly.
“Oh, yes? Nobody ever complained about my work.”
“Then why did you quit?”
“You know why. Fiddle with finicky figures for months on end—and what have you got? A repair dock. Or a stamping mill. And who cares?”
“So you aren’t an engineer. You’re merely a man who knows engineering.”
“What about yourself? You didn’t stick with it.”
“No,” she admitted, “but my reasons were different. I saw three big, hairy, male men promoted over my head and not one of them could do a partial integration without a pencil. Presently I figured out that the Atomic Energy Commission had a bias on the subject of women no matter what the civil service rules said. So I took a job dealing blackjack. Luna City didn’t offer much choice in those days—and I had you to support.”
The argument seemed about to die out; Castor judged it was time to mix it up again. “Hazel, do you really think we should get a Hanshaw? I’m not sure we can afford it.”
“Well, now, you really need a third crewman for a—”
“Do you want to buy in?”
Mr. Stone interrupted. “Hazel, I will not stand by and let you encourage this. I’m putting my foot down.”
“You look silly standing there on one foot. Don’t try to bring me up, Roger. At ninety-five my habits are fairly well set.”
“Ninety-five indeed! Last week you were eighty-five.”
“It’s been a hard week. Back to our muttons—why don’t you buy in with them? You could go along and keep them out of trouble.”
“What? Me?” Mr. Stone took a deep breath. “(A) a marine guard couldn’t keep these two junior-model Napoleons out of trouble. I know; I’ve tried. (B) I do not like a Hanshaw; they are fuel hogs. (C) I have to turn out three episodes a week of The Scourge of the Spaceways—including one which must be taped tonight, if this family will ever quiet down!”
“Roger,” his mother answered, “trouble in this family is like water for fish. And nobody asked you to buy a Hanshaw. As to your third point, give me a blank spool and I’ll dictate the next three episodes tonight while I’m brushing my hair.” Hazel’s hair was still thick and quite red. So far, no one had caught her dyeing it. “It’s about time you broke that contract anyway; you’ve won your bet.”
Her son winced. Two years before he had let himself be trapped into a bet that he could write better stuff than was being channeled up from Earth—and had gotten himself caught in a quicksand of fat checks and options. “I can’t afford to quit,” he said feebly.
“What good is money if you don’t have time to spend it? Give me that spool and the box.”
“You can’t write it.”
“Want to bet?”
Her son backed down; no one yet had won a bet with Hazel. “That’s beside the point. I’m a family man; I’ve got Edith and Buster and Meade to think about, too.”
Meade turned her head again. “If you’re thinking about me, Daddy, I’d like to go. Why, I’ve never been any place—except that one trip to Venus and twice to New York.”
“Hold still, Meade,” Dr. Stone said quietly. She went on to her husband, “You know, Roger, I was thinking just the other day how cramped this apartment is. And we haven’t been any place, as Meade says, since we got back from Venus.”
Mr. Stone stared. “You too? Edith, this apartment is bigger than any ship compartment; you know that.”
“Yes, but a ship seems bigger. In free fall one gets so much more use out of the room.”
“My dear, do I understand that you are supporting this junket?”
“Oh, not at all! I was speaking in general terms. But you do sleep better aboard ship. You never snore in free fall.”
“I do not snore!”
Dr. Stone did not answer. Hazel snickered. Pollux caught Castor’s eye and Castor nodded; the two slipped quietly away to their own room. It was a lot of trouble to get mother involved in a family argument, but worth the effort; nothing important was ever decided until she joined in.
Meade tapped on their door a little later; Castor let her in and looked her over; she was dressed in the height of fashion for the American Old West. “Square dancing again, huh?”
“Eliminations tonight. Look here, Cas, even if Daddy breaks loose from the money you two might be stymied by being underage for an unlimited license—right?”
“We figure on a waiver.” They had also discussed blasting off without a waiver, but it did not seem the time to mention it.
“But you might not get it. Just bear in mind that I will be eighteen next week. ’Bye now!”
“Good night.”
When she had gone Pollux said, “That’s silly. She hasn’t even taken her limited license.”
“No, but she’s had astrogation in school and we could coach her.”
“Cas, you’re crazy. We can’t drag her all around the system; girls are a nuisance.”
“You’ve got that wrong, Junior. You mean ‘sisters’—girls are okay.”
Pollux considered this. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“I’m always right.”
“Oh, so? How about the time you tried to use liquid air to—”
“Let’s not be petty!”
Grandmother Hazel stuck her head in next. “Just a quick battle report, boys. Your father is groggy but still fighting gamely.”
“Is he going to let us use the money?”
“Doesn’t look like it, as of now. Tell me, how much did Ekizian ask you for that Detroiter?”
Castor told her; she whistled. “The gonoph,” she said softly. “That unblushing groundhog—I’ll have his license lifted.”
“Oh, we didn’t agree to pay it.”
“Don’t sign with him at all unless I’m at your elbow. I know where the body is buried.”
“Okay. Look, Hazel, you really think a Detroiter VII is unstable?”
She wrinkled her brow. “Its gyros are too light for the ship’s moment of inertia. I hate a ship that wobbles. If we could pick up a war-surplus triple-duo gyro system, cheap, you would have something. I’ll inquire around.”
It was much later when Mr. Stone looked in. “Still awake, boys?”
“Oh, sure, come in.”
“About that matter we were discussing tonight—”
Pollux said, “Do we get the money???
?
Castor dug him in the ribs but it was too late. Their father said, “I told you that was out. But I wanted to ask you: did you, when you were shopping around today, happen to ask, uh, about any larger ships?”
Castor looked blank. “Why, no, sir. We couldn’t afford anything larger—could we, Pol?”
“Gee, no! Why do you ask, Dad?”
“Oh, nothing, nothing at all! Uh, good night.”
He left. The twins turned to each other and solemnly shook hands.
CHAPTER TWO
A CASE FOR DRAMATIC LICENSE
AT BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING
—“morning” by Greenwich time, of course; it was still late afternoon by local sun time and would be for a couple of days—the Stone family acted out the episode Hazel had dictated the night before of Mr. Stone’s marathon adventure serial. Grandma Hazel had stuck the spool of dictation into the autotyper as soon as she had gotten up; there was a typed copy for each of them. Even Buster had a small side to read and Hazel played several parts, crouching and jumping around and shifting her voice from rusty bass to soprano.
Everybody got into the act—everybody but Mr. Stone; he listened with a dour try-to-make-me-laugh expression.
Hazel finished her grand cliff-hanging finale by knocking over her coffee. She plucked the cup out of the air and had a napkin under the brown flood before it could reach the floor under the urge of the Moon’s leisurely field. “Well?” she said breathlessly to her son, while still panting from the Galactic Overlord’s frantic attempts to escape a just fate. “How about it? Isn’t that a dilly? Did we scare the dickens out of ’em or didn’t we?”
Roger Stone did not answer; he merely held his nose. Hazel looked amazed. “You didn’t like it? Why, Roger, I do believe you’re jealous. To think I would raise a son with spirit so mean that he would be envious of his own mother!”
Buster spoke up. “I liked it. Let’s do that part over where I shoot the space pirate.” He pointed a finger and made a zizzing noise. “Wheel Blood all over the bulkheads!”
“There’s your answer, Roger. Your public. If Buster likes it, you’re in.”
“I thought it was exciting,” Meade put in. “What was wrong with it, Daddy?”
“Yes,” agreed Hazel belligerently. “Go ahead. Tell us.”