The good-by kiss from Ellie was the only thing about the jonmey that wasn’t nightmarish. ISN’s expense account stuck me on a rusty bucket that I shared with glamorous freight Hke yak kids and tenpenny nails. The little yaks blatted
•benever we went into overdrive to break through the speed «f light. The Greenhough Effect—known to readers of the
•oence features as “supertime”—scared hell out of them. On
•r&nary rocket drive, they just groaned and whimpered to mcb other the yak equivalent of “Thibet was never like this!” The Frostbite spaceport wasn’t like the South Pole, but it ^•B like Greenland, There was a bunch of farmers waiting lor their yaks, beating their mittened hands together and ex-
••*«”• long plumes of vapor. The collector of customs,
a rat-faced city boy, didn’t have the decency to tarn them over and let the hayseeds get back to the administration building. I watched through a porthole and saw him stalling and dawdling over a sheaf of papers for each of the farmers. Oddly enough, the stalling and dawdling stopped as soon as the farmers caught on and passed over a few dollars. Nobody even bothered to slip it shamefac’ fly from one hand to another. They just hanc.t-J.it over, not caring who saw—Rat-Face sneering, the farmers dumbly accepting the racket.
My turn came. Rat-Face came aboard and we were introduced by the chief engineer. “Harya,” he said. “Twenny bucks.”
“What forr
“Landing permit. Later at the administration you can pay your visitor’s permit. That’s twenny, bucks too.”
“I’m not a visitor. I’m coming here to work.”
“Work, schmurk. So you’ll need a work permit—twenny bucks.” His eyes wandered. “Whaddaya got there?”
“Ethertype parts. May need them for replacements.”
He was on his knees hi front of the box, crooning, “Triple ad valorem plus twenny dollars security bond for each part plus twenny dollars inspection fee plus twenny dollars for decontamination plus twenny dollars for failure to declare plus—”
“Break it up, Joe,” said a new arrival—a grey-mustached little man, lost in his parka. “He’s a friend of mine. Extend the courtesies of the port.”
Rat-Face—Joe—didn’t like it, but he took it. He muttered about doing his duty and gave me a card.
“Twenny bucks?” I asked, studying it.
“Nab,” he said angrily. “You’re free-loading.” He got out
“Looks as if you saved ISN some money,” I said to the little man. He threw back the hood of his parka in the relative warmth of the ship.
“Why not? We’ll be working together. I’m Chenery from the Phoenix.”
“Oh, yeah—the client”
“That’s right,” he agreed, grinning. “The client What exactly did you do to get banished to Frostbite?”
Since there was probably a spacemail aboard from Mc-Gillicuddy telling him exactly what I did, I told him. “Chief thought I was generally shiftless.”
“You’ll do here,” he said. “It’s a shiftless, easy-going kind
of place. I have the key to your bureau. Want me to lead the way?”
“What about my baggage?”
Tour stuffs safe. Port officers won’t loot it when they know you’re a friend of the Phoenix.”
That wasn’t exactly what I’d meant; I’d always taken it for granted that port officers didn’t loot anybody’s baggage, no matter whose friends they were or weren’t. As Chenery had said, it seemed to be a shiftless, easy-going place. I let him lead the way; he had a jeep watting to take us to the administration building, a musty, too-tight hodgepodge of desks. A tot of them were vacant, and the dowdy women and fattish men at the others, didn’t seem to be very busy. The women were doing then- nails or reading; the men mostly were playing blotto with pocket-size dials for small change. A couple were sleeping.
From the administration building a jet job took us the 20 kilos to-town. Frostbite, the capital of Frostbite, housed maybe 40,000 people. No pressure dome. Just the glorious outdoors, complete with dust, weather, bisects, and a steady, icy wind. Hick towns seem to be the same the universe over. There was a main street called Main Street with clothing ibops and restaurants, gambling houses, and more or less fancy saloons, a couple of vaudeville theaters, and dance bafls. At the unfashionable end of Main Street were some Cum implement shops, places to buy surveying instruments and geologic detectors and the building that housed the Inter-MeQar News Service Frostbite Bureau. It was a couple of front rooms on the second floor, with a mechanical dentist Wow, an osteopath above, and a “ride-up-and-save” parka •nporium to the rear.