It was amazing how good we felt on a couple of hours’ sleep. Laura was glowing. She kept picking me up in her arms, Rhett Butler style. She’d jump when I goosed her, then steady herself with a hand on my head and let me lift her one-handed. I played tricks with my imaginary arm.
We went formal and cautious when it came time to leave. I left first. Desiree Porter and Tom Reinecke were coming down the hall. They hailed me and swept me up and tried to pump me for news on the Conference.
I sidestepped. “What have you two been doing all this time, just waiting for one of us to crack?”
Tom said, “There was Penzler. There was the trial. We’ve been interviewing lunies, too. You know, a lot of them aren’t going to be happy no matter what you do.”
“And we screw a lot,” Desiree said.
“That I kind of assumed. Hey, did you two know each other before you got here?”
“Nope. It was just one of those thing-”
“Lust at first sight. I think it’s his legs I like best. Belt men have their muscles mainly in the arms and shoulders.”
“So you only love me for my legs, huh?”
“And your mind. Didn’t I mention your mind?”
We had reached the elevators. I started to step in, then told them I’d left something in my room, which was true enough.
Now the hall was empty. I called the door open, Laura joined me, and we went down to breakfast. We weren’t even holding hands. But our hands brushed sometimes, and Laura kept suppressing a smile, and I wondered just how much we were hiding. For that matter, I’d seen Reinecke’s oddly sardonic smile as the elevator doors closed.
At breakfast I told Laura I wanted to check out a puffer.
She didn’t like it. “Isn’t there a Committee meeting?”
“I’ll skip a day. Hell, this is Committee business. If the courts have convicted an innocent person-”
She shrugged angrily. “If she didn’t try to murder Penzler, then she was doing something else!”
The idea percolated through to me that as a man newly in love, I was supposed to forget old loves entirely. Laura didn’t want to hear that I still hoped to save Naomi Mitchison.
I sidestepped again. “I left a case half solved once,” I said, and I told her how Raymond Sinclair’s surrealistic death scene was linked to two organleggers found with their faces burned down to the bone. I had nearly reached the morgue in the same condition.
Maybe she bought it. She did help me check out a puffer.
The puffers were racked along one wall of the mirror works. Today there were several gaps. The only difference between the orange city police puffers and the rentals was that the rentals came in all colors.
I chose a police puffer. It was a low-slung motorcycle with a wide padded bucket seat and a cargo framework behind. There were three tanks. The motor had no intake. An exhaust pipe forked to left and right just under the seat. The shock absorbers were huge, and the tires were great fat soft tubes.
Laura showed me how to get it going and tried to tell me how to run it, how to maneuver, how to steer, where not to steer. “I could cross a dust pool,” she told me. “Like a bat out of hell, and if you slow down you’ll turn over, and if the wheel hits a submerged rock you’ll be under the dust trying to figure out which way is up. You stay away from dust pools. Don’t hit any rocks. If you fall, get your arms over your helmet-”
“I’ll stick to the road,” I said. “That’s safe, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” She was reluctant to admit that anything was safe.
“Why are there three tanks?”
“Oxygen, hydrogen, water vapor. We don’t throw away water, Gil The exhaust is just a safety valve, and of course it powers the side jets. You shouldn’t have to use them, but do it if you think you’re falling over.”
I climbed on. I could barely feel the vibration. “It isn’t puffing,” I noticed.
“It’s not supposed to. If it starts puffing steam, something’s wrong. That’s why they’re called puffers. If it happens, slow way down and check your air, because you may have to walk home.” She insisted on showing me how to bleed oxygen from the puffer tank into my backpack.
“Have you got all that?”
“Yup.”
“Keep it slow till you learn how to steer. This is the Moon. You’ll have to lean further than you think.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t get off till 2000. Will you be back by then?”
“I’m bound to.”
We clinked helmets in lieu of a kiss, and I went.
From the city’s east face, the mirror works, the trade road hooked around and aimed straight west I bounced along at a fair rate for an off-road vehicle. I marked the tilted rock far off to my left, and a road that wound uphill to my right, up to the air and water plant. I had seen it from a height, miniaturized in the projection room: mirrors mounted around the rim of a fair-sized recent crater, focussing their light down onto a pressure vessel filled with red-hot lunar rock. Pipes to lead hydrogen in, water vapor out I was tempted to go up and look at the real thing. Maybe on the way back...
To my left was the land Naomi had tried to lead us through, and the peak Naomi had tried to climb. I kept going.
The road twisted like an injured snake. A broad road led left toward the strip mines that had made Hovestraydt City rich. When they played out the city had turned to mirror making.
Naomi wasn’t a native. To meet someone out here, she would need some obvious landmark. The same would hold if someone had simply left a puffer parked somewhere for her. The mines? She couldn’t get last, witnesses were unlikely, and the tailings might fool radar for a small vehicle.
She’d led us a merry dance, the day after the attack on Chris Penzler. Alan Watson must have given her what she needed when he showed her the projection room. And she’d danced her way right into the organ banks. To hide what?
Or else the jury was right.
Presently I was bouncing downhill, beyond the region I’d searched with my imaginary hand, beyond anywhere Naomi could have reached on foot. Far ahead was a line of silver: the mass driver built to supply ore for the L-5 project of the 2040s. The company had gone bankrupt, and the mass driver was half built and long obsolete.
I kept checking my watch.
There was the Trading Post ahead. Unused to picking out details in moonscape, my eyes had been missing it for some time. I found the shapes of two spacecraft first, then the outline of the spaceport, then the crescent of stone-and-glass building around it. The road became a circle between the building and the spaceport. I had made the run in just thirty-five minutes.
The Trading Post was strange by anyone’s standards.
There was no dome. Oblong buildings were individually pressurized; sometimes they were linked by tunnels. In Selene’s Bar and Grill, where I stopped for lunch, I found racks for fishbowl helmets but none for pressure suits. The customers kept their credit coins in outside pockets.
Selene’s Bar and Grill, Mare Serenitatis Spa (with a pool and sauna), the Man in the Moon Hotel (he was shown yawning), Aphrodite’s: all the place names were moon-related. Half the people I saw were lunies. Aphrodite’s rented sexual favors. The waitress at Selene’s told me it catered specifically to lunies. I was a little shocked.
The administration building was all the way around the circle. It was big enough to get lost in. The police, licensing, and port administration were scattered through the building. I finally found the goldskin offices.
“ARM business,” I told the only clerk in sight.
He was watching a fold-up 3D screen propped in front of him. He didn’t look up. “Yah?”
“Last Wednesday someone shot a Belt delegate to the Conference on-”
Now he looked up. “We heard about that Didn’t they solve that one? I heard-”
“Look, there’s a possibility that our suspect was here at the time. That would mean she wasn’t shooting at Penzler.
We never found the weapon either. That adds up to a would be killer with a message laser still hunting a Belt delegate.”
“See your point. What do you need?”
“Were there any crimes committed here between 2230 Tuesday and 0130 Wednesday?” Naomi would have had to walk to where someone left a puffer for her, then drive here. At least half an hour coming and half an hour back. Later I’d have to pace it off on foot.
He set aside his fold-up screen and tapped at a computer keyboard. The screen lit “Mmm ... we had a fight at Aphrodite’s about that time. A lunie dead, two Belters and a lunie under arrest, all male. But you’re looking for something premeditated.”
“Right.”
“Zip.”
“Futz. How about disappearances?”
He summoned up the Missing Persons records. Nobody had been reported missing since Wednesday. It seemed that Naomi had not been committing a crime of violence.
“How well do you keep track of your puffers?”
“They’re licensed. Generally the residents own their own.” He was typing as he spoke. The screen filled. “These are rentals-”
“Chili Bird?” The name rang a bell.
“Two puffers charged to the Chili Bird account for two days. Well, that’s reasonable. Antsie had passengers.”
“Tell me more.”
He scowled-I was inventing work for him, and he would have preferred not to-but he typed, and more data appeared. “Antsie de Campo, owner and pilot of Chili Bird out of Vesta. Arrived April 10. Left April 13. Passengers, Dr. Raymond Forward and a four-year-old girl, Ruth Hancock
Cowles. Cargo ... he had a light load. Monopoles. He took off with some chicken and turkey embryos; maybe that’s why the doctor was along.”
April 13 was the day after the attempt on Penzler. “Where are they now?”
“Headed for Confinement Asteroid. Probably because of the little girl.” He typed. “I remember her now. She was a doll. Interested in everything. She loved low gravity; she was bouncing around-” The screen responded. “Chili Bird’s almost to Confinement now. Is this any use to you?”
“I hope so. Where can I send a message to Chili Bird?”
He told me how to find Interplanetary Voice, on a peak outside the city circle.
There would have been several minutes’ lightspeed delay m conversation. I sent a straight ‘gram.
TO: DR RAYMOND FORWARD
NAOMI MITCHISON TRIED AND CONVICFED FOR ATTEMPTED MURDER COMMITI’ED HOVESTRAYDT CITY 0130 WEDNESDAY APRIL 13. EXECUTION PENDING. IF YOU KNOW OF HER MOVEMENTS DURING RELEVANT TIME, CALL ME .ROVESTRAYDT CITY.
GILBERT HAMILTON, ARM
I didn’t stop on the way home. I couldn’t guess where someone might have left a puffer for Naomi. Maybe I had already wasted time I couldn’t afford. I felt time’s hot breath on the back of my neck, an unreasonable conviction that Naomi didn’t have months, but only hours.
McCavity hailed me in the hail. “Hello, Gil. The offer’s still open,” he said.
“Offer?”
“Someone to get drunk with.”
“Oh. I may need it yet. Let me buy you a drink now. I haven’t seen a bar-”
“There aren’t any. We tend to keep our own supplies and drink in our rooms. Come on, I’ve got a good stock.”
McCavity’s quarters were near the bottom level of the city.
He didn’t have any kind of bartending device; the drinks were going to be simple. He offered me something he called earthshine poured over ice, and I took it.
Smooth.
“Distilling is dirt cheap here,” Harry said. “Heat, cold, partial vacuum, they’re all just outside the wall. Do you like it?”
“Yeah. It tastes like a good bourbon.”
“I got a call from Taffy. She reached Marxgrad okay. She says she left you a message too.”
“Good.”
“I gather you got together okay?”
“Yes, thank God. I was a basket case. She reassembled me.” I sipped again. “I wish I had the time to get drunk in good company. It might be just what I need. Harry, do you know of a Belt doctor, a Raymond Forward?”
McCavity scratched his head. “Rings a bell. Yeah, he’s got some lunie clients. Specialist in fertility problems.”
Futz. Naomi didn’t suffer from infertility. “He was on the Moon for a few days. Maybe he had a lunie client?”
“There’d be records. We don’t have restrictions on fertility, except the natural ones.”
“Okay, I can check that out.”
“What’s it all about?”
“He was here at the right time, and he came in with a light cargo. Maybe there were ulterior motives.”
“Right time for what?”
“Naomi. Maybe I’m going at this wrong end round. I should be looking for whoever shot at Chris Penzler. But if Naomi wasn’t where she said she was . . . well, it’s one handle on a puzzle. I can track that down. She could have been meeting someone. Maybe Antsie de Campo, maybe Forward. Could there be two Raymond Forwards?”
“Both Belt doctors? Well, it’s possible.” He sipped at his own drink. “Was Naomi infertile?”
“She was fertile. She’d also sworn never to have another kid.”
“Then that’s out”
“By another man.”
“What?”
“She swore she’d never have children by another man. This Forward, he solves infertility problems?”
“Right. You’ve got something, don’t you?”
“Cloning?”
“If all else fails, he can grow a clone for a patient. It’s hellishly expensive.”
“Can I borrow your phone?”
“I’ll call for you. What number?”
I told him.
Artemus Boone stood frowning in the doorway of his office. “I was just closing up. I can meet you tomorrow at 1000. Unless it’s urgent?”
“It feels urgent,” I told the phone image. “Do you still regard Naomi Mitchison as your client?”
“Certainly.”
“I need to discuss her case, confidentially.”
He sighed. “Come to my office. I’ll wait.”
I turned to Harry McCavity. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll be pleased to get drunk with you when this is all over, but just now-”
He waved that off “Will I ever know what this was all about?”
“There’s more than one kind of crime,” I said cryptically, and left.
Artemus Boone sat behind his ancient, lovingly maintained computer terminal and propped his beard on his folded hands. “Now, what’s this all about, Mr. Hamilton?”
“I want a legal opinion on a hypothetical situation.”
“Go on.”
“A flatlander woman hires a Belt doctor to take a clone from her and grow it to term. The operation takes place on the Moon. The woman returns to Earth. The child is raised in the asteroids. Four years later they meet again, on the Moon. The woman is still on the Moon when it all becomes public knowledge.”
Boone stared as if I’d sprouted horns. “Damnation!”
“Sure. Now, the United Nations Fertility Laws would have our hypothetical flatlander woman sterilized if she had an illegal baby. They’d sterilize the baby too. But this particular woman still has one birthright, so she could have a baby with no problem. But what about a clone?”
Boone shook his head. He was still thunderstruck. “I don’t know. My field is lunar law.”
“Would the UN try to extradite the woman? Would the Moon let them get away with it? Would they try to extradite the baby too? Or are they both safe because the crime took place off Earth?”
“Again, I don’t know. I’d want research this. In some legal respects the Moon is part of the United Nations. Damnation! Why didn’t she discuss this with me?”
“She could have been scared to. She never mentioned any such situation?”
He smiled like a man in pain. “Never. Damnation. I’m nearly certain that the baby could not be extradited. If only she’d asked! Hamilton, is our hypothetical baby still on the Moon?”
“No.”
“Good.” He stood up abruptly. “I’ll be able to give you a better answer tomorrow. Call me.”
I reached my room expecting to spend some time on the phone. Getting Budrys to tell me what went on at the Conference could take up to an hour. I wanted to check Dr. Forward’s credentials and recent movements. And Taffy’s message was waiting... I dropped onto the bed and pulled my shoes off and said, “Chiron, messages.”
And Laura Drury’s image, in full pressure suit, said, “Gil, you’ll have to have dinner without me. I’m going out with a search party. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Chris Penzler’s turned up missing.”