would have kept a deathwatch, but the AA rating lulled me and I went to the Hamilton House to sleep.
At 4:30, the bedside phone chimed. “This Willie Egan,” a frightened voice said. “You remember—on the desk at the Phoenix.” Desk, hell—he was a 17-year-old copyboy I’d tipped to alert me on any hot breaks.
“There’s some kind of trouble with the Esmeralda,” he said. That big immigrant ship. They had a welcoming committee out, but the ship’s overdue. I thought there might be a story in h. You got my home address? You better send the check there. Mr. Weems doesn’t like us to do string work. How much do I get?”
“Depends,” I said, waking up abruptly. “Thanks, kid.” I was into my clothes and down the street in five minutes. It looked good; mighty good.
The ship was overcrowded, the AA insurance rating I had was a year old—maybe it had gone to pot since then and we’d have a major disaster on our hands.
I snapped on the newsroom lights and grabbed the desk phone, knocked down one toggle on the key box and demanded: “Space operator! Space operator!”
“Yes, sir. Let me have your call, please?”
“Gimme the bridge of the Esmeralda due to dock at the Frostbite spaceport today. While you’re setting up the call gimme interplanetary and break in when you get the Etmeralda.”
“Yes, sir.” Click-click-click.
“Interplanetary operator.”
“Gimme Planet Gammadion. Person-to-person, to the public relations officer of the Frimstedt Atomic Astrogation Company. No, I don’t know his name. No, I don’t know the Gam-nadion routing. While you’re setting up the call gimme the local operator and break in when you get my party.”
“Yes, sir.” Click-click-click.
“Your call, please.”
“Person-to-person, captain of the spaceport”
“Yes, sir.”
Click-click-click. “Here is Esmeralda, sir.”
“Who’s calling?” yelled a voice. “This is the purser’s of-fce, who’s calling?”
“Interstellar News, Frostbite Bureau. What’s up about the ihip being late?”
“I can’t talk now! Oh, niy God! I can’t talk now! They’re going crazy in the steerage—” He hung up and I swore a little.
“Space operator!” I yelled. “Get me Esmeralda again—if you can’t get the bridge get the radio shack, the captain’s cabin, anything in-boardl”
“Yes, sir.”
Click-click-click. “Here is your party, sir.”
“Captain of the port’s office,” said the phone.
“This is Interstellar News. What’s up about Esmeralda? I just talked to the purser in space and there’s some trouble aboard.”
“I don’t know anything more about it than you boys,” said the captain of the port. But his voice didn’t sound right.
“How about those safety-standard stories?” I fired into the dark.
“That’s a tomfool rumor!” he exploded. “Her atomics are perfectly safe!”
“Still,” I told him, fishing, “it was an engineer’s report—”
“Eh? What was? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He realized he’d been had. “Other ships have been an hour late before and there are always rumors about shipping. That’s absolutely all I have to say—absolutely all!” He hung up.
Click-click-click. “Interplanetary operator. I am trying to place your call, sir.” She must be too excited to plug in the right hole on her switchboard. A Frostbite Gammadion call probably cost more than her annual salary, and it was a gamble at that on the feeble and mysteriously erratic sub-radiation that carried voices across segments of the galaxy.
But there came a faint harumph from the phone. “This is Captain Gulbransen. Who is calling, please?”
I yelled into the phone respectfully: “Captain Gulbransen, this is Interstellar News Service on Frostbite.” I knew the way conservative shipping companies have of putting ancient, irritable astrogators into public-relations berths after they are ripe to retire from space. “I was wondering, sir,” I shouted, “if you’d care to comment on the fact that Esmeralda is overdue at Frostbite with 1,000 immigrants.”
“Young man,” wheezed Gulbransen dimly, “it is clearly stated in our tariffs filed with the ICC that all times of arrival are to be read as plus or minus eight Terrestrial Hours, and
that the company assumes no liability in such cases as—”
“Excuse me, sir, but I’m aware that the eight-hour leeway is traditional. But isn’t it a fact that the average voyage hits, the E.T.A. plus or minus only fifteen minutes T.H.?”