Roberts Operation Interstellar (Serapis Classics)

1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-3-96255-813-0
Verlag: Serapis Classics
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 102 Seiten

Paul Grayson walked the city street slowly. He was sauntering towards the spaceport, but he was in no hurry. He had allowed himself plenty of time to breathe the fresh spring air, to listen to the myriad of sounds made by his fellow men, and to revel in the grand freedom that being out in the open gave him. Soon enough he would be breathing canned air, pungent with the odor of compressor oil and the tang of the greenery used to replenish the oxygen, unable to walk freely more than a few dozen steps, and unable to see what lies beyond his viewports. Occasionally his eyes looked along the low southern sky towards Alpha Centauri. Proxima, of course, could not be resolved by the naked eye, much less the stinking little overheated mote that rotated about Proxima. Obviously unfit for human life and patently incapable of spawning life of its own, it was Paul Grayson's destination, and would be his home for a few days or a few weeks depending entirely upon whether things went good or bad. Only during the last four out of two thousand millions of years of its life had this planet been useful. Man needed a place to stand; not to move the earth with Archimedes's lever but to survey the galaxy. Proxima Centauri I was the only planet in the trinary and as bad as it was, it was useful for a space station. In an hour, Paul Grayson would be locked in a capsule of metal hurling himself through space towards Proxima I. He was looking forward to ten days cooped up in a spacecraft of the type furnished by the Bureau of Astrogation to its engineers which was a far cry from the sumptuous craft run by the Big Brass. His confines would be lined with functional scientific equipment; his air supply would be medically acceptable but aesthetically horrible; and his vision limited to the cabin, for beyond the viewports would be only the formless, endless, abysmal blackness of absolutely nothing while the ship mounted into multiples of the speed of light...

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roberts, Arthur

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2
The police car U-turned in the broad roadway and headed off to return Nora Phillips to her home and to pick up the officer set to sentry duty. Paul waved them off and then started to walk up the pavement towards the administration building. He was feeling better. Everything pleased him vastly. The knot inside of his head was gone, he had made the acquaintance of a very delectable armful of femininity, and now he had been chauffeured to the spaceport by none other than the City Police Department, complete with siren. On his way up the sidewalk, Paul planned the retort perfect. Anticipating some humorous sarcasm on the mode of his arrival, Paul hoped to crush any verbal volley with unanswerable repartee. Usually Paul's fount of boundless wit ran just a trifle slow, following the definition of a bon mot: something you think of on the way home. This time he was going to be prepared. He swung the door airily and strode in, his tongue poised over a few words of terse wit. The guard looked at him and swallowed a large lump. "How in hell did you get out?" he gasped. This was not according to plan; unfortunately, the guard had not read Paul's script, and the prepared answer would not fit the question. "I was never in," said Paul lamely, again wishing he had a tongue full of ready wit instead of fumbling for a prepared speech. "The hell you weren't." Paul took it from there, ignoring the fact that the guard had not followed Paul's mental conversation. "That was a car reserved for very important personages," he said. "From now on you can call me Viper." The guard by-passed this. "But how did you get out?" he asked. His voice was almost a plea. "You didn't pass me." "Were you guarding the jail too?" chuckled Paul. "Fast man, no?" "You came in a taxicab the first time." "Ah yes. But that was years ago before people knew of my brilliance, importance, and high station. Now—" "Years ago, my eye. Less than fifteen minutes ago—" "I did not." "You did." "Not me." Paul's feeling of airy well-being came down a few thousand feet and mired in a cumulus cloud. "Look, Grayson, you came in a taxicab and breezed in here about fifteen minutes ago as though you had only a minute to spare." "You're thinking of someone else." "Your picture said Paul Grayson, and so did your identification. How else would I be knowing you?" "You've seen me often enough." "Maybe. But don't forget that I see a few thousand people every day. And I know you only well enough to know that you do own bona fide credentials. You've got 'em?" "I—" Paul blinked. A great searing light was starting to cut through the cobwebs of his brain. The airy feeling of well-being dropped below the cumulus cloud and made a one-point landing on strictly solid ground. "Look," he said soberly. "You claim a man came through here a few minutes ago, resembling me?" "Unless you ain't who you are, he was you." "He wasn't me. My papers were stolen less than an hour ago. He must have—" The guard was no imbecile. He turned in a flash and hit a button on the desk beside him. An alarm bell rang in some inner room and four more guards came tumbling out of a doorway, alert and ready for trouble. "Tommy," snapped the guard at the door, "Go check Paul Grayson's ship, that's number—" "BurAst 33-P.G.1." The guard looked at Paul carefully. "You're a dead ringer for the other guy that came through here," he said. "But you happen to know Paul Grayson's BurAst number. Anybody could memorize it." Paul watched the other guards tumble out of the building and head off across the spaceport on a dead run, drawing pistols as they went. He started to follow them. The guard barred his way. "No you don't!" "But that guy is stealing—" "Maybe your name is Grayson and maybe the other guy is Grayson. You look alike and he had identification. I don't know Paul Grayson well enough to accept or deny you—or him. But until you show me credentials entitling you to roam this spaceport, you stay outside!" "But—" "The boys I sent out there are capable. Don't get in their way. They might shoot the wrong Paul Grayson." "But—" "Get your credentials. Get some sort of identification." Paul looked at the big standard clock on the wall. "But I've got less than eight minutes until take-off time." "There's always tomorrow. You'll get cleared first or no entry! And that's final." "Hell's Eternal Bells!" exploded Paul. "The cops that brought me here did so because I was clipped on the bean and robbed." "It's my job," explained the guard quietly. "I don't want to be any more of a bastard than I have to be. If you're Paul Grayson and the cops know you were robbed, there's the telephone." Paul grabbed the phone and started to dial, fuming at the delay. First there was a few seconds until the dial tone came, then Paul dialed the outside line. Another few seconds of delay until he could dial the number of the municipal police department. Then a bored voice asked: "Police headquarters, who's calling please." "This is Paul Grayson at the Municipal Spaceport." "What's the trouble out there?" "A crook stole my identification." "We'll send a man out to investigate." "No!" yelled Paul to prevent the telephone operator from cutting off the line on the assumption that the call was closed. "You don't understand. I'm supposed to take off in—ah—seven minutes." "We can't get a man there that quickly. You'll have to wait." "Look," said Paul hurriedly, "there's a squad car that just dropped me here. I was clipped on Talman Avenue and they went there to investigate, they brought me here. Why not call them and ask them to come back and explain to the guards here what happened?" "I'll check that and take action," promised the voice in a completely bored tone. Paul fumed. There was the sound of a shot outside, followed instantly by the shrill, whining song of a ricochet, probably a glance from the hard metal flank of a parked spacecraft. The telephone went dead and a second later came the dial tone again. Paul hung it up reluctantly. And that made it worse. Other hands were not as imbued with the importance of the project. To other hands it was a routine bit of trouble, not the matter of life and death that it was to Paul Grayson; yet he to whom this thing was vastly important must sit with folded hands while men handled the matter in ponderous routine. The clock continued to turn inexorably. Paul's mathematically-inclined mind went to work; it was less than two minutes since the police car left. Give them a minute to check up, and a minute to make sure, then a minute to call the car. That was three of the precious seven minutes gone to hell. If it took them as long to return as it took them to get where they now were, throw another two minutes down the drain and that left two minutes in which to let the sergeant explain to the guard, clear Paul Grayson on a pro tem basis, get him across the spaceport to his ship, in, up, and away. He groaned. He wished frantically for some means of knowing what was going on; what measures were being made in his behalf. He wanted desperately to listen to the radio in the police car. He wanted to get on the radio himself and roar out explanations, to exhort them to greater effort— The siren wail of the police car cut into his thoughts and Paul raced to the door to fling it open. The car slid to the curb and the siren whined down the scale as the driver turned it off. They got out of the car and came up the walk briskly. "Hurry!" he called. He cast a glance over his shoulder at the standard clock. He had three minutes. "Tell 'em who I am!" he exploded breathlessly. The sergeant blinked. "But I don't know who you are." "But I've told you." "Hell," grunted the guard. "You've told me, too." To the sergeant, the guard said: "Do you know anything about all this?" "We got a call that this man had been clipped and robbed. He was." The sergeant looked at Nora Phillips. "Can you identify this man?" Nora bit her lip. "He's Paul Grayson." The guard speared Nora with a cold look. "Do you know that or is it just what he said?" "Why I've—" "She's never met him otherwise," put in the sergeant. "That's true, but I think—" "Thinking ain't good enough." Nora looked at Paul. "Haven't you anything to show?" Paul shook his head. "Nothing that would cut any ice. Belt buckle with initial G. A few laundry marks and cleaners' marks. A checkbook in my hip pocket but no name printed in it. I might check the balance against the bank, but that would be tomorrow morning. We might call Doctor Haedaecker, but by the time we arrived on some means of personal identification, take-off time would be gone and past." Paul paused, breathless, his whole body poised tense and his head bent to listen. There came the patter of feet outside. The standard clock was swinging towards the hour, two minutes remained, enough if all went quick and well. One of the guards burst in. He took a quick look around and spotted the police sergeant. "Good," he said, breathing heavily. "We've just shot a man out there. You're needed." "Was it the man who passed himself off as me?" shouted Paul Grayson. "As we came up to BurAst 33-P.G.1, this guy jumped from the airlock and started to run. We gave chase and lost him in the dark beyond a group of parked spacecraft. We called for him to halt. We found him again on the far...