Venture science fiction.., p.239
Venture Science Fiction: The Complete Fiction, page 239
“A sensor may be giving us bad information, but we can’t take that chance.”
Tony looked out at Rocket 11. He wanted to stick to the plan. It had worked out fine so far. But he didn’t want Don Tito, who was due to board a rocket soon, to think Tony Chestnut would risk a rocketful of lives.
He had only a minute to make up his mind and he was making it up to tell the launch director to hold. A soldier ran in.
“There’s shooting out by the sea.”
Tony swung to the launch director.
“Launch.” He swung to Don Tito. “We gotta stick to the plan. We can only hold them off so long.
We gotta get each rocket out on time. We can’t risk the lives of the rest of us.”
Don Tito nodded. Tony swung to get on to Don Pezzo and find out how bad it was and what he needed.
By the time Tony found out, the rocket had lifted off. It rose out of the picture window, and Tony swung to a large chart that flashed on the wall above the front row of consoles. A yellow dot showed at the bottom of the chart. Slowly the dot rose, tracing the planned curve.
Seventy seconds into the flight. At 40,000 feet the rocket was reaching Max Q. In those seconds before breaking the sound barrier, upper-air turbulence would put maximum stress on the rocket’s superstructure.
The yellow dot suddenly jiggled away from the planned curve.
“My God.”
The boat rode a swell and Nick saw a flaming arrowhead hit the horizon due north. He looked at his watch and did some figuring. If they had been sticking to the plan, that was the rocket the Corvinos would have been on.
Macalucci was sore at Don Pezzo for the cursing out. He nudged A1 Dente and whispered.
“There’s you Indian.”
He pointed his cigar at Don Pezzo, who had draped an Army blanket around himself.
Don Pezzo heard a whisper but didn’t look around. His eyes gazed blankly toward where the broken rocket had fallen into the sea. He whispered to himself.
“I’m glad I don’t go after all.”
He wrapped the blanket more tightly about himself.
0935 HOURS
Nick had seen the arcs of four perfect lift-offs follow the bad trip at fifteen-minute spaces and wipe it from his mind. Now he saw a stand of rockets and gantries on the headland. He swung the boat in toward the Cape.
It answered sluggishly. But he had had time to get used to it, time piled on time, since finding out once it took to the water that it was a long-shaft motor on a short-shaft transom. The extra drag had knocked about six miles off the speed and had really burned fuel.
He angled the boat to fly the Mafia flag plainly. This was not in the plan and the Mustache Petes would be trigger-happy. They had nothing to lose. He aimed for a space between beached boats. They thought they had nothing to lose.
Shooting-gallery figures popped up along the shore, but they were the ones with the guns. He untied his shoes; he might have to dive over the side. But strangely enough they held their fire and waited to make out his flag.
A guy in a blanket waved him in. Nick rode the boat ashore, then jumped off the bow. He squelched to the guy in the blanket.
“Take me to Don Pezzo.”
“I’m Pezzo.”
Nick looked. That was Don Pezzo under all that. He had smeared on some of all the camouflage creams he had found in his kit—Bark Brown, Glade Green, Shadow Black.
“You’re the Taglione kid, hey? You didn’t come out of that rocket wreck, did you?”
“Uh, no. I’ve just been kind of checking the perimeter.”
“Oh.”
Nick bent to tie his shoes, but air horns sounded across the palmetto flats. Don Pezzo grabbed his arm.
“Hurry.”
Nick followed Don Pezzo into a slit trench. For the next few minutes he was too busy riding out the storm and shutting his eyes against sand to watch the lift-off. He got up and brushed himself off. No sense hanging around here. He got Don Pezzo to let Macalucci jeep him to the gantry of Rocket 40.
1010 HOURS
Reports began coming in from the outposts. Tony Chestnut put them together to read that the Army and the Marines were moving in on the Space Center, bringing up heavy pieces.
“I don’t think we have to worry about that. They don’t wanna damage nothing. They’ll see it’s a standoff. You just look out for helicopters and paratroops. You see them, you blast them out of the sky.”
1105 HOURS
The enforcer loading them up for Rocket 22 kept the gantry elevator pumping people into the big nose of the rocket. A small nose poked out of a kid’s jacket.
“Hold it, kid.” The enforcer pulled the zipper down, lifted the pup out by the scruff, and set it four-splay on the ground. “You know you can’t take pets.”
“That’s Duke.”
“Move along, kid. You’re holding up the line.”
“If I can’t take Duke, then I don’t wanna go.”
The kid’s mother tried to push the kid along.
“He don’t mean that.”
The enforcer drew his gun.
“Sure he don’t mean that, but we’ll see.”
He shot the dog.
The kid moved along. But he looked at the guy, filing away the enforcer’s face in his mind.
1345 HOURS
The enforcer loading them up for Rocket 31 fixed his eye on a teenager with a mutinous crew cut.
“Up against the wall.”
The kid leaned to the gantry frame while the enforcer frisked him. Inside the kid’s shirt was what felt like a small potted plant. The enforcer spoke in a whisper.
“What is it, kid?”
The kid answered in a whisper.
“Acapulco gold, man. Best pot there is. I’ll deal you in when I get it going.”
The enforcer filed away the kid’s face in his mind, then winked and passed him through.
1525 HOURS
The last group left the blockhouse they had waited in all these hours and lined up at the gantry elevator to Rocket 40.
One of the older women, still with love beads and glowing paint and headband full of rainbow feathers, knelt for a second, crossed herself, and rose, pushing herself up from the ground. When she came to the enforcer, she reached across with her left hand to dig her ticket out of her right pocket. The enforcer took her right hand and opened it. Dirt. He frowned, then his face cleared. Earth. He folded her hand and gestured her on.
Tony’s jeep pulled up. Ferro bucked the line to get their bags on the elevator. Ferro rode them up and stowed them in the luggage compartment of the passenger stage, then rode back down to stand beside Tony.
He watched the enforcer stop a guy wearing one of those phony beards.
“Why the hell ain’t you pulled off your beard yet?” Then the enforcer read the ticket the guy had handed him. “Oh. Sorry, Johnny, but you know how it is. Every bit of weight counts.”
Ferro’s gaze snapped to the now-naked face. That wasn’t Johnny Vecchio’s new face. That was the face of the guy that should’ve been a stiff in Marta’s motel unit. Jay Factor was the guy’s name. The guy had lived and learned and got away. He could’ve blown the whole thing.
Ferro sweated. He cut a glance at Tony but Tony had his mind on something else. Ferro gave a flickering thought to Johnny Vecchio. The hell with Johnny Vecchio.
He watched the fake Johnny Vecchio get into the elevator. He would take care of the guy for good once they were up and away.
Tony’s gaze followed Clara Dellaripa. Tony could remember when Rose had picked three-year-old Clara up and said, “She’s a real doll.” He had given Rose a look of disgust and said, “No she ain’t. She’s a real girl.” Clara had stared at him and given him a slow smile. She had liked him. She had peed on his lap.
She was a real woman now. She would make a good mother for his sons. He had always thought so, but while her grandfather Vince Podesta was in the same world, Tony had kept that thought way in the back of his head. But now—
He would own a world. He would put down roots in new soil. He would found a dynasty.
He looked back at the Launch Control Center. The group of last-ditch Mustache Petes he had left in charge of the Firing Room was the ugliest-looking he could put together. He hoped they wouldn’t all drop dead on him in the excitement. He hoped that those of them like Don Pezzo who knew the score and had accepted their fate could keep in line those who didn’t know the score but were beginning to realize that this was no mere heist. But the hostages the other short-enders and fall guys were sitting on should hold the thing together to the end. He looked around.
At last. He rode up to the payload level. Last man aboard. The captain and his ship.
“Tony.”
He turned from the hatch to see Nick. Nick in a technician’s white suit. Nick standing on the gantry platform.
“Glad you made it after all, kid.” He looked past Nick. “Nobody with you? Bugle already inside?”
Nick shook his head.
“So you done him like you done the Corvinos? Well, that’s all right. We’re all our own kind now. Unless you already got Marta and her kid aboard? What’s the matter, Nick? You look funny. Jeez, don’t just stand there. Get in if you’re coming. We ain’t got no more time.”
“I only came to tell you something, Tony. The sun isn’t going nova. The whole thing was a con to get rid of the Mafia.” Nick smiled. “That’s it, goombah. Or, in a more tony accent, compare.”
Tony’s brain went nova, then subsided.
“There is a starship up there? It will take us to another planet?”
“Yes and yes.”
“You in on it from the start?”
“That’s something you’ll never know.”
Nick was backing toward a hole. Maybe if he kept talking to Nick, the punk would fall through.
“See your mother go in?”
Nick nodded.
“Say anything to her?”
Nick shook his head.
“See Clara go in?”
Nick nodded.
“Say anything to her?”
Nick shook his head.
“That’s good. I wouldn’t want anybody aboard to know. Be kind of a big joke on me, wouldn’t it?”
Nick was smiling past him but that was an old trick.
“You got anything else to tell me, kid? No? Well, I got something else to tell you. You know, you’re like your father—only your brain’s really gone soft. I don’t think you’re gonna do nothing to spoil this rocket when I tell you. A lot of people on it beside me. Your mother, for one. And Clara.” He smiled. “I conned you about the Corvinos. They never killed your father and put him in the crusher. It was me. That’s it, figlioccio.”
Nick stopped just short of the hole. It would have to be the gun.
But as Tony went for his gun, a voice came from behind, and he couldn’t help half-turning his head. Yet the corner of his eye told him Nick had fallen through the hole after all. The sudden appearance of Ferro must’ve done it.
“ ’Scuse me, Don Tony, was that true what he said? About the sun ain’t gonna blow up?”
Tony turned slowly. He smiled at the creases in Ferro’s brow.
“Oh, you heard what he said?”
Ferro nodded.
“Is it true?”
“That’s something you’ll never know.”
Tony pulled the trigger. Ferro folded over the hatchway. Tony dragged the body to the hole and pitched it in after Nick.
He climbed into the rocket, calmed those inside, dogged down the door, and strapped himself into his couch.
He laughed. He would never forget Nick’s eyes.
Nick, taking the smooth turns and slides of the teflon escape tube, heard the shot and then something slithering after him. As soon as his feet touched down he stepped aside.
He waited, then something landed in a bloody crumple. Poor Jimmy Ferro hadn’t touched himself against the evil eye.
Nick raced to the end of the corridor, skidded into the safety chamber, swung the door shut and dogged it down, and slowly let himself down on a bench.
1700 HOURS
The Army moved in at last, taking the jaunty surrender of the Mustache Petes, except for some who wanted to go down fighting.
A patrol found Nick Tallant in the safety chamber, led him out, jeeped him to the Launch Control Center, and led him into an office.
They searched him, had some people look at him, then sat him down under guard.
1730 HOURS
A helicopter landed outside.
The sergeant snapped to attention, yelled “Ten-hut!” and saluted.
Buglewicz, a newspaper swagger stick under his arm, came in with a colonel. He let the colonel take the salute. He stared at Nick so hard the sergeant apologized.
“We’ll move him someplace else, sir. They say he’s not one of the Space Center technicians. We found a dead body near where we picked him up. We’re holding him for questioning.”
Buglewicz waved that away.
“I know him. Excuse me, Colonel.”
He levered Nick up by the elbow and led him into a corner.
“You won’t mention my momentary aberration, will you, Tallant. I don’t want to lean on you by putting it as your word against mine. I’ll put it as you cover for me and I’ll cover for you.”
Buglewicz saw he had Nick’s numbness, if not his word. He led Nick back and handed him the newspaper.
“Here, sit down and catch up with what’s been going on.”
Buglewicz turned to help the Army, the Launch Control Center, and the government tie up the loose ends.
Nick found himself gazing at a headline in Second-Coming type that took up the whole front page to say “U.S. OUSTS COSTRA NOSTRA!”
The inside pages gave out little more. For the sake of the space-station technicians who were, under duress, helping the hijackers dock the payloads and erase the dotted line of rockets in parking orbit, the government was saving details till the starship was beyond doubt streaking out of the solar system.
Back of the center-fold wire-photos of the Easter Parade, which reminded him it was Easter Sunday, an item with a Pasadena dateline stopped him.
MYSTERY DEATH
LINKED TO
MYSTERY DEATH
Pasadena (UP)—Boyd Sandsmark, 35, a noted astrophysicist, was found early today in his home at 1132 Romance Blvd. dead of gas asphyxiation. Sgt. Arthur Usery and Patrolman Thomas Scruggs, answering a neighbor’s call of a gas smell, smelled gas, heard the television playing, but got no response.
They broke in and discovered Sandsmark’s body, which lay on the kitchen floor, head on a pillow, close to the open jets of the oven. The officers shut off the gas and carried the body outdoors at once, and Patrolman Scruggs attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but in vain. It was later determined that Sandsmark had been dead several hours.
“I couldn’t help being a ‘nosy neighbor’,” said Mrs. Ursula Perkins of 1137 Romance Blvd., mustering a smile though still shaken by the find. “I mean the smell of gas was quite strong when I passed by with Roger—he’s my champion Irish setter. And it was really his barking that alerted me. So we hurried back home and phoned the police, didn’t we, Roger?” Roger, who has a beautiful gloss, thumped agreement.
The mystery deepened when police found a gun buried under a rose bush at the entrance to Sandsmark’s house. After subjecting the weapon to ballistics tests, Pasadena police said they would have liked to question Sandsmark in connection with the recent murder of Fred Globus, 27, a colleague of Sandsmark’s . . .
1800 HOURS
Since it was Easter Sunday, the inmates had it extra easy. Benny was sweeping Don Vincenzo Podesta’s boccie court. Feet came towards him and he quickly lessened the arc and the force of the broom.
“Hey, Benny, what you doing that for? Ain’t you heard the latest?”
It was Mooch. Benny looked up slowly, dully.
“What latest?”
“There ain’t no more Mafia outside.”
“Aah, you’re putting me on.”
“Yeah? Here comes Don Vince. Watch. Hey, Vince. Yeah, you, fart-face.”
Don Vince stopped. His eyes came from another plane of seeing to fix on Mooch.
Benny sucked in his breath.
Mooch spat. A bubbly blob landed on Don Vince’s pants leg.
Don Vince’s face mottled. He took out a handkerchief and started to bend. A ball-point pen fell from his shirt pocket and, as it hit, its cap came off. Don Vince straightened. He looked at Benny and held out the handkerchief.
“Here, wipe. And pick that thing up.”
Benny took the handkerchief. He picked up the pen.
“And get the thing that goes on the point.”
Benny stared at the pen in his hand and found he wasn’t holding it like a pen. He let the cap lie. He looked into Vince’s eyes.
Nick’s hand flashed to his brow. Buglewicz broke off talking to the colonel.
“What’s wrong, Tallant?”
“Nothing, I guess.”
It had struck like a bolt of something between headache and toothache, but it was too faint and soon gone. Funny, for the first time in many days he remembered Don Vince.
Buglewicz dry-washed his hands and turned back to the colonel.
“Yes, Colonel, we kept well within the limit of acceptable casualties.” Nick let Buglewicz’s voice drone itself out of hearing. Violence was American as cherry pie, pizza, and collard greens. He wondered what Buglewicz and his masters would dream up for Packo Ledyard’s twenty million people. He stared at the ceiling. Meanwhile, Earthfolk would be driving into the night until they found their day, their new sun among the other stars.
The Evergreen Library
Bill Pronzini and Jeffrey Wallmann
The revelation that he had never previously visited the estate of old Pruitt Evergreen, in all the years he had handled the aged and white-haired gentleman’s legal affairs, struck Simon Graham for the first time as he guided his Lincoln Continental along the Dutch elm-bordered private lane. Not once had he had occasion to make the long drive from Philadelphia, through meandering miles of autumnal-colored Pennsylvania countryside, and Graham found himself wondering at Evergreen’s lack of hospitality over the past three decades. After all, he had represented old Pruitt’s mundane and infrequent needs ever since he had begun his practice prior to the Second World War, carrying out whatever wishes were asked of him during personal contact at his office, or by telephone.
