Short Fiction Poul Anderson (reading a book .TXT) 📖

“Yes, indeed.”

“What?”

“About one hundred seventy-five centimeters tall, yellow hair, blue eyes, and some of the smoothest fourth-order curves I ever⁠—”

“Mike, stop that!” Avis sounded appalled. “This is serious.”

“I agree. She’ll be leaving in a few more watches.”

The girl bit her lip. “You’re too old for that mooncalf rot and you know it.”

“Agreed again. I feel more like a bull.” Blades made pawing motions on the desktop.

“There’s a lady present,” Chung said.

Blades saw that Avis had gone quite pale. “I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I never thought⁠ ⁠… I mean, you’ve always seemed like⁠—”

“One of the boys,” she finished for him in a brittle tone. “Sure. Forget it. What’s the problem, Jimmy?”

Chung folded his hands and stared at them. “I can’t quite define that,” he answered, word by careful word. “Perhaps I’ve simply gone spacedizzy. But when we called on Admiral Hulse, and later when he called on us, didn’t you get the impression of, well, wariness? Didn’t he seem to be watching and probing, every minute we were together?”

“I wouldn’t call him a cheerful sort,” Blades nodded. “Stiff as molasses on Pluto. But I suppose⁠ ⁠… supposed he’s just naturally that way.”

Chung shook his head. “It wasn’t a normal standoffishness. You’ve heard me reminisce about the time I was on Vesta with the North American technical representative, when the Convention was negotiated.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that story a few times,” said Avis dryly.

“Remember, that was right after the Europa Incident. We’d come close to a space war⁠—undeclared, but it would have been nasty. We were still close. Every delegate went to that conference cocked and primed.

“Hulse had the same manner.”

A silence fell. Blades said at length, “Well, come to think of it, he did ask some rather odd questions. He seemed to twist the conversation now and then, so he could find things out like our exact layout, emergency doctrine, and so forth. It didn’t strike me as significant, though.”

“Nor me,” Chung admitted. “Taken in isolation, it meant nothing. But these visitors today⁠—Sure, most of them obviously didn’t suspect anything untoward. But that Liebknecht, now. Why was he so interested in Central Control? Nothing new or secret there. Yet he kept asking for details like the shielding factor of the walls.”

“So did Commander Warburton,” Blades remembered. “Also, he wanted to know exactly when the Pallas is due, how long she’ll stay⁠ ⁠… hm-m-m, yes, whether we have any radio linkage with the outside, like to Ceres or even the nearest Commission base⁠—”

“Did you tell him that we don’t?” Avis asked sharply.

“Yes. Shouldn’t I have?”

“It scarcely makes any difference,” Chung said in a resigned voice. “As thoroughly as they went over the ground, they’d have seen what we do and do not have installed so far.”

He leaned forward. “Why are they hanging around?” he asked. “I was handed some story about overhauling the missile system.”

“Me, too,” Blades said.

“But you don’t consider a job complete till it’s been tested. And you don’t fire a test shot, even a dummy, this close to a Station. Besides, what could have gone wrong? I can’t see a ship departing Earth orbit for a long cruise without everything being in order. And they didn’t mention any meteorites, any kind of trouble, en route. Furthermore, why do the work here? The Navy yard’s at Ceres. We can’t spare them any decent amount of materials or tools or help.”

Blades frowned. His own half-formulated doubts shouldered to the fore, which was doubly unpleasant after he’d been considering Ellen Ziska. “They tell me the international situation at home is OK,” he offered.

Avis nodded. “What newsfaxes we get in the mail indicate as much,” she said. “So why this hanky-panky?” After a moment, in a changed voice: “Jimmy, you begin to scare me a little.”

“I scare myself,” Chung said.

“Every morning when you debeard,” Blades said; but his heart wasn’t in it. He shook himself and protested: “Damnation, they’re our own countrymen. We’re engaged in a lawful business. Why should they do anything to us?”

“Maybe Avis can throw some light on that,” Chung suggested.

The girl twisted her fingers together. “Not me,” she said. “I’m no politician.”

“But you were home not so long ago. You talked with people, read the news, watched the 3V. Can’t you at least give an impression?”

“N-no⁠—Well, of course the preliminary guns of the election campaign were already being fired. The Social Justice Party was talking a lot about⁠ ⁠… oh, it seemed so ridiculous that I didn’t pay much attention.”

“They talked about how the government had been pouring billions and billions of dollars into space, while overpopulation produced crying needs in America’s back yard,” Chung said. “We know that much, even in the Belt. We know the appropriations are due to be cut, now the Essjays are in. So what?”

“We don’t need a subsidy any longer,” Blades remarked. “It’d help a lot, but we can get along without if we have to, and personally, I prefer that. Less government money means less government control.”

“Sure,” Avis said. “There was more than that involved, however. The Essjays were complaining about the small return on the investment. Not enough minerals coming back to Earth.”

“Well, for Jupiter’s sake,” Blades exclaimed, “what do they expect? We have to build up our capabilities first.”

“They even said, some of them, that enough reward never would be gotten. That under existing financial policies, the Belt would go in for its own expansion, use nearly everything it produced for itself and export only a trickle to America. I had to explain to several of my parents’ friends that I wasn’t really a socially irresponsible capitalist.”

“Is that all the information you have?” Chung asked when she fell silent.

“I⁠ ⁠… I suppose so. Everything was so vague. No dramatic events. More of an atmosphere than a concrete thing.”

“Still, you confirm my own impression,” Chung said. Blades jerked his undisciplined imagination back from the idea of a Thing, with bug eyes and tentacles, cast in reinforced concrete, and listened as his partner summed up:

“The popular feeling at home