. . . of course he would get into trouble. But that was nothing compared to the trouble he would be in if he did not get into trouble!
*
The visiphone chimed when Peri had just gotten into her dinner gown. She peeled it off again and slipped on a casual bathrobe: a wisp of translucence which had set the president of Antarctic Enterprise—or had it been the chairman of the board?—back several thousand dollars. Then she pulled a lock of lion-colored hair down over one eye, checked with a mirror, rumpled it a tiny bit more and wrapped the robe loosely on top and tight around the hips.
After all, some of the men who knew her private number were important.
She undulated to the phone and pressed its Accept. “Hello-o, there,” she said automatically. “So sorry to keep you waiting. I was just taking a bath and—Oh. It’s you.”
Gus Doran’s prawnlike eyes popped at her. “Holy Success,” he whispered in awe. “You sure the wires can carry that much voltage?”
“Well, hurry up with whatever it is,” snapped Peri. “I got a date tonight.”
“I’ll say you do! With a Martian!”
*
Peri narrowed her silver-blue gaze and looked icily at him. “You must have heard wrong, Gus. He’s the heir apparent of Indonesia, Inc., that’s who, and if you called up to ask for a piece of him, you can just blank right out again. I saw him first!”
Doran’s thin sharp face grinned. “You break that date, Peri. Put it off or something. I got this Martian for you, see?”
“So? Since when has all Mars had as much spending money as one big-time marijuana rancher? Not to mention the heir ap—”
“Sure, sure. But how much are those boys going to spend on any girl, even a high-level type like you? Listen, I need you just for tonight, see? This Martian is strictly from gone. He is here on official business, but he is a yokel and I do mean hayseed. Like he asked me what the Christmas decorations in all the stores were! And here is the solar nexus of it, Peri, kid.”
Doran leaned forward as if to climb out of the screen. “He has got a hundred million dollars expense money, and they are not going to audit his accounts at home. One hundred million good green certificates, legal tender anywhere in the United Protectorates. And he has about as much backbone as a piece of steak alga. Kid, if I did not happen to have experience otherwise with a small nephew, I would say this will be like taking candy from a baby.”
Peri’s peaches-and-cream countenance began to resemble peaches and cream left overnight on Pluto. “Badger?” she asked.
“Sure. You and Sam Wendt handle the routine. I will take the go-between angle, so he will think of me as still his friend, because I have other plans for him too. But if we can’t shake a million out of him for this one night’s work, there is something akilter. And your share of a million is three hundred thirty-three—”
“Is five hundred thousand flat,” said Peri. “Too bad I just got an awful headache and can’t see Mr. Sastro tonight. Where you at, Gus?”
*
The gravity was not as hard to take as Peter Matheny had expected. Three generations on Mars might lengthen the legs and expand the chest a trifle, but the genes had come from Earth and the organism readjusts. What set him gasping was the air. It weighed like a ton of wool and had apparently sopped up half the Atlantic Ocean. Ears trained to listen through the Martian atmosphere shuddered from the racket conducted by Earth’s. The passport official seemed to bellow at him.
“Pardon me for asking this. The United Protectorates welcome all visitors to Earth and I assure you, sir, an ordinary five-year visa provokes no questions. But since you came on an official courier boat of your planet, Mr. Matheny, regulations force me to ask your business.”
“Well—recruiting.”
The official patted his comfortable stomach, iridescent in neolon, and chuckled patronizingly. “I am afraid, sir, you won’t find many people who wish to leave. They wouldn’t be able to see the Teamsters Hour on Mars, would they?”
“Oh, we don’t expect immigration,” said Matheny shyly. He was a fairly young man, but small, with a dark-thatched, snub-nosed, gray-eyed head that seemed too large for his slender body. “We learned long ago that no one is interested any more in giving up even second-class citizenship on Earth to live in the Republic. But we only wanted to hire——uh, I mean engage—an, an advisor. We’re not businessmen. We know our export trade hasn’t a chance among all your corporations unless we get some—a five-year contract . . . ?”
He heard his words trailing off idiotically, and swore at himself.
“Well, good luck.” The official’s tone was skeptical. He stamped the passport and handed it back. “There, now, you are free to travel anywhere in the Protectorates. But I would advise you to leave the capital and get into the sticks—um, I mean the provinces. I am sure there must be tolerably competent sales executives in Russia or Congolese Belgium or such regions. Frankly, sir, I do not believe you can attract anyone out of Newer York.”
“Thanks,” said Matheny, “but, you see, I—we need—that is . . . . Oh, well. Thanks. Good-by.”
He backed out of the office.
*
A dropshaft deposited him on a walkway. The crowd, a rainbow of men in pajamas and robes, women in Neo-Sino dresses and goldleaf hats, swept him against the rail. For a moment, squashed to the wire, he stared a hundred feet down at the river of automobiles. Phobos! he thought wildly. If the barrier gives, I’ll be sliced in two by a dorsal fin before I hit the pavement!
The August twilight wrapped him in heat and stickiness. He could see neither stars nor even moon through the city’s blaze. The forest of multi-colored towers, cataracting half a mile skyward across more acreage than his eyes reached, was impressive and all that, but—he used to stroll out in the rock garden behind his cottage and smoke a pipe in company with Orion. On summer evenings, that is, when the temperature wasn’t too far below zero.
Why did they tap me for this job? he asked himself in a surge of homesickness. What the hell is the Martian Embassy here for?
He, Peter Matheny, was no more than a peaceful professor of sociodynamics at Devil’s Kettle University. Of course, he had advised his government before now—in fact, the Red Ankh Society had been his idea—but still he was at ease only with his books and his chess and his mineral collection, a faculty poker party on Tenthday night and an occasional trip to Swindletown—
My God, thought Matheny, here I am, one solitary outlander in the greatest commercial empire the human race has ever seen, and I’m supposed to find my planet a con man!
He began walking, disconsolately, at random. His lizardskin shirt and black culottes drew glances, but derisive ones: their cut was forty years out of date. He should find himself a hotel, he thought drearily, but he wasn’t tired; the spaceport would pneumo his baggage to him whenever he did check in. The few Martians who had been to Earth had gone into ecstasies over the automation which put any service you could name on a twenty-four-hour basis. But it would be a long time before Mars had such machines. If ever.
The city roared at him.
He fumbled after his pipe. Of course, he told himself, that’s why the Embassy can’t act. I may find it advisable to go outside the law. Please, sir, where can I contact the underworld?
He wished gambling were legal on Earth. The Constitution of the Martian Republic forbade sumptuary and moral legislation; quite apart from the rambunctious individualism which that document formulated, the article was a practical necessity. Life was bleak enough on the deserts, without being denied the pleasure of trying to bottom-deal some friend who was happily trying to mark the cards. Matheny would have found a few spins of roulette soothing: it was always an intellectual challenge to work out the system by which the management operated