essentially a tractor with a sharp edged flattened front that acted as a huge dustpan. As
it drove forward it scraped the frying lettuce heads off the smooth ground and, when
enough had been collected, it lifted them over the heads of the crew and deposited them
in a large bin. Jules and Ktobu went ahead of the machine, helping to guide the refuse
into it while Hassahman drove and Hastings tamped down the bin after every filling.
“What do we do with all this garbage once we pick it up?” Jules wondered aloud. “Does
it just get burned, or what?.
Ktobu shook his head. “Can’t afford to waste it like that. The recycling center comes and
picks up the bin.” Once Ktobu pointed out the obvious, the solution made eminent sense
to Jules. Vesa, as an airless moon, was a closed society. There were probably small
hydroponic gardens scattered about growing a small percentage of the food consumed
here, but most of it had to be imported from Chandakha and elsewhere. All organic
matter was potentially edible, and none could be allowed to be wasted. In order to cut
down on the amount of importation, there would have to be a recycling plant to sort
through the organic refuse and salvage as much of it as possible for future use. All
airless worlds had such systems, but Jules had not visited too many and had never given
the matter close consideration before now.
It took the rest of that work shift and a half hour of overtime besides to clean up the
mess that had been made. Fizcono, efficient as ever, had put in an order for a truck from
the recycling plant, and it arrived just at the time Jules and his crew brought the scraper
with its bin filled to overflowing back to the hangar. The white-clad recycler attendants
went silently about their business of transferring the refuse from the bin to their truck,
then drove off with hardly a word. “Are they always that brusque?” Jules asked Fizcono.
The big man nodded. “It’s almost a caste situation,” he explained. “The caste system
was officially ended long before Chandakha was settled, but social taboos sometimes
take a very long time to die, especially among such traditionalist people. Because the
workers at the recycling plant handle wastes and dead matter, they’re ritually unclean
and are shunned by most of the rest of society. People just prefer not to have too much
to do with them.” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Can’t say I blame ’em much,
either. It’s a pretty disgusting occupation, once you think about it.
As soon as Jules clocked out he went back to his cheap hotel room, changed his clothes
and went out for another night of barhopping. The situation was much as he had found it
the night before-entirely too quiet. He did overhear a few conversations indicating that
there was some criminal activity on the moon, but it was of a routine sort: drugs, theft,
prostitution and extortion. The local police were-or should be-able to keep that under
control; Jules was looking for bigger game. And it was nowhere to be found.
I’ll have to try a new direction, he thought wearily as he came home and climbed into his
bed. There’s got to be a hook to this affair somehow. Thirty-five people a day are
vanishing. There’s got to be an organization around doing it-and if there is, they’ll have to
surface somewhere.
He fell asleep quickly, but got little rest that night; dreams of indeterminate murders
tossed him all about the bed.
It was a chore just to drag himself to work the next day. His lack of success at finding
clues about the conspiracy was depressing him, and the thought of another eight hours
on the job sandwiched between two warring factions only added to the feeling of
malaise. He toyed with the idea of dropping the job and spending all his time
investigating; he certainly didn’t need the money, and the hours spent at the dock were
detracting from both his time and his stamina for his real work. But, attractive as that
idea was, he let it go past with only a sigh of regret. Being a secret agent, he knew, was
ninety-nine percent legwork. He needed a basic identity in case he got into trouble, and
he shouldn’t be letting the glamor of the field go to his head. This dull job, too, came with
the territory.
He arrived five minutes late, and almost everyone else was suited up. As he quickly
scurried into his own spacesuit, he looked around and noticed that they were two hands
short today-not only was Brownsend still absent, but so was Rask. “Where is
everybody?” he asked.
“There’s still no word from Brownsend,” Fizcono growled. Clearly he was not happy at
having to work shorthanded. “I’m putting him on suspension for now and requisitioning a
new hand from one of the other teams until he either comes back or we replace him
permanently.” The tone of his voice made it plain that he considered the latter possibility
preferable.
“As for Rask,” the foreman went on, “I don’t know exactly where he is. His suit’s gone
from his locker, which means he might have gone outside early. That’s not like him at all;
he’s competent, but doesn’t have that much initiative. I’ve tried raising him on the radio,
but he doesn’t answer, so your guess is as good as mine as to where he is.” The big
man shook his head. “Don’t you go temperamental on me too, duChamps, or I’ll have a
nervous breakdown.
The new man that Fizcono had requisitioned would not be able to join them until later in
the shift, so the work crew went out onto the field two short. As usual, the Chandakhari
stayed in a group by themselves, talking but little and being very introspective. They
walked to the mobile crane that was their particular specialty and set out across the
open crater toward the ship they were currently working on. Jules, Fizcono and the rest
followed slightly behind in the flatbed carrier that was to hold the unloaded cargo.
Jules had let his mind go pleasantly blank as a relaxation technique during the mildly
jostling ride, but suddenly a movement from the right brought his attention back to full
alert. From behind two nearby ships, the small scraper suddenly darted out at full speed
and launched itself toward the mobile crane. It was only traveling at twenty kilometers an
hour, hardly a breakneck pace, but even so it was lighter and more maneuverable than
the vehicle it was approaching.
Fizcono spotted the scraper at almost the same instant Jules did. “What in hell’s going on
out there?” he exclaimed.
Jules’ sharp eyes had focused on the driver of the vehicle. “It’s Rask,” he said curtly. “I
think he’s going to ram the crane.
The words that burst from Fizcono’s lips were in a slang peculiar to spacemen and
dockworkers, and they expressed his displeasure in particularly graphic terms that would
have burned the ears off more sensitive listeners. Jules was familiar with this brand of
swearing, so it wouldn’t have bothered him even if he’d been listening -which he wasn’t.
He was never one who could sit idly by and watch something happen; even as he was
telling Fizcono what Rask was intending, he had started into action.
The crane was about ten meters ahead of the carrier on which the SOTE agent had
been riding. With a slight running start, Jules leaped from the front edge of his vehicle
toward the crane. His spring had been carefully gauged to utilize Vesa’s low gravity to
the fullest extent. The arc of his flight was a low, flat one, because he knew that the
higher he went, the longer it would take him to come down and the further the crane
would have traveled in the meantime. Even so, it seemed to take forever to his
speeded-up senses before he approached the crane; objects fell much more slowly on
Vesa.
While still along his arc he called out over the radio, “Everybody off the crane! Rask
means business.” At the same time, he twisted his body around in a quick acrobatic
maneuver so that he would land on the crane feet first. And, while his attention was on
his landing spot, he nonetheless had time to give a couple of quick glances to see what
the scraper was doing.
Rask was driving the smaller vehicle in a most uneven manner. While there was no
question of what its target was, the course it was taking weaved along the floor of the
crater as though the driver had only partial control. Its motion was also slightly uneven,
accelerating in a series of rapid jerks rather than a smooth pace.
That didn’t matter. The scraper would still strike the crane with an impact that would
cause major damage. And in the vacuum on the surface of Vesa, any accident could be