He lay back on the pillows and shook hands with himself until he fell asleep.
Book Two
A DIP IN THE
SWIMMING-POOL REACTOR
I
Ahead of them the front end of the cylindrical shuttleship was a single, gigantic viewport, a thick shield of armored glass now filled by the rushing coils of cloud that they were dropping down through. Bill leaned back comfortably in the deceleration chair, watching the scene with keen anticipation. There were seats for twenty in the stubby shuttleship, but only three of them, including Bill’s, were now occupied. Sitting next to him, and he tried hard not to look too often, was a gunner first class who looked as though he had been blown out of one of his own guns. His face was mostly plastic and contained just a single, bloodshot eye. He was a mobile basket case, since his four missing limbs had been replaced by glistening gadgetry, all shining pistons, electronic controls, and coiling wires. His gunner’s insignia was welded to the steel frame that took the place of his upper arm. The third man, a thickset brute of an infantry sergeant, had fallen asleep as soon as they boarded after transshipping from the stellar transport.
“Bowbidy-bowb! Look at that!” Bill felt elated as their ship broke through the clouds and there, spread before them, was the gleaming golden sphere of Helior, the Imperial Planet, the ruling world of 10,000 suns.
“What an albedo,” the gunner grunted from somewhere inside his plastic face. “Hurts the eye.”
“I should hope so! Solid gold—can you imagine-a planet plated with solid gold?!”
“No, I can’t imagine. And I don’t believe it either. It would cost too much. But I can imagine one covered with anodized aluminum. Like. that one.”
Now that Bill looked closer he could see that it didn’t really shine like gold, and he started to feel depressed again. No! He forced himself to perk up. You could take away the gold but you couldn’t take away the gloryl Helior was still the imperial world, the never sleeping, all-seeing eye in the heart of the galaxy. Everything that happened on every planet or on every ship in space was reported here, sorted, coded, filed, annotated, judged, lost, found, acted on. From Helior came the orders that ruled the worlds of man, that held back the night of alien domination. Helior, a man-changed world with its seas, mountains, and continents covered by a shielding of metal, miles thick, layer upon layer of levels with a global population dedicated to but one ideal. Rule. The gleaming upper level was dotted with space ships of all sizes, while the dark sky twinkled with others arriving and departing. Closer and closer swam the scene, then there was a sudden burst of light and the window went dark.
“We crashed!” Bill gasped. “Good as dead …’
“Shut your wug. That was just the film what broke, Since there’s no brass on this run they won’t bother fixing it.”
“Film?”
“What else? Are you so ratty in the head you think they’re going to build shuttleships with great big windows in the nose just where the maximum friction on re-entry will burn holes in them? A film. Back projection. For all we know it’s nighttime here.”
The pilot mashed them with 15G when they landed (he also knew he had no brass on this run), and while they were popping their dislocated vertebrae back into position and squeezing their eyeballs back into shape so that they could see, the hatch swung open. Not only was it night, but it was raining too. A Second-class Passenger Handler’s Mate poked his head in and swept them with a professionally friendly grin.
“Welcome to Helior, Imperial Planet of a thousand delights-” his face fell into a habitual snarl. “Ain’t there no officers with you bowbs? C’mon, shag outta there, get the uranium out, we gotta schedule to keep.”
They ignored him as he brushed by and went to wake the infantry sergeant, still snoring like a broken impeller, untroubled in his sleep by a little thing like 15Gs. The snore changed to a throaty grunt that was cut into by the Passenger Handler’s Mate’s shrill scream as he was kneed in the groin. Still muttering, the sergeant joined them as they left the ship and he helped steady the gunner’s clattering metal legs on the still wet surface of the landing ramp. They watched with stony resignation as their duffel bags were ejected from the luggage compartment into a deep pool of water. As a last feeble flick of petty revenge the Passenger Handler’s Mate turned off the repeller field that had been keeping the rain off them, and they were soaking wet in an instant and chilled by the icy wind. They shouldered their bags-except for the gunner, who dragged his on little wheels-and started for the nearest lights, at least a mile away and barely visible through the lashing rain. Halfway there the gunner froze up as his relays shorted, so they put the wheels under his heels and loaded the bags onto his legs, and he made a damn fine handcar the rest of the way.