decks? Your agency gets a fitness report from us, you know.” He ignored me completely. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kobler,” the guard said, saluting and coming to a brace. “This man seems to be on the stuff. He came out and gave me an argument that he’s a star-class copysmith on board by mistake-” “Look at my number!” I yelled at the lieutenant. His face wrinkled as I thrust my bared elbow under his nose. The guard grabbed me and snarled: “Don’t you bother the-” “Just a minute,” said the Panagra officer. “I’ll handle this. That’s a high number, fellow. What do you expect to prove by showing me that?” “It’s been added to, fore and aft. My real number is 16-156-187. See? Before and after that there’s a different lettering style! It’s tampering!” Holding his breath, the lieutenant looked very closely. He said: “Umm. Just barely possible . . . come with me.” The guard hastened to open a corridor door for him and me. He looked scared. The lieutenant took me through a roaring confusion of engine rooms to the purser’s hatbox-sized office. The purser was a sharp-faced gnome who wore his Panagra uniform as though it were a sack. “Show him your number,” the lieutenant directed me, and I did. To the purser he said: “What’s the story on this man?” The purser slipped a reel into the reader and cranked it. “1304-9974-1416-156-187723,” he read at last. “Groby, William George; 26; bachelor; broken home (father’s desertion) child; third of five sibs; H-H balance, male 1; health, 2.9; occupational class 2 for seven years; 1.5 for three months; education 9; signed labor contract B.” He looked up at the flight officer. “A very dull profile, lieutenant. Is there any special reason why I should be interested in this man?” The lieutenant said: “He claims he’s a copysmith in here by mistake. He says somebody altered his number. And he speaks a little above his class.” “Tut,” said the purser. “Don’t let that worry you. A broken-home child, especially a middle sib from the lower levels, reads and views incessantly trying to better himself. But nevertheless you’ll notice-” “That’s enough of that,” I snarled at the little man, quite fed up. “I’m Mitchell Courtenay. I can buy you and sell you without straining my petty cash account. I’m in charge of the Fowler Schocken
Associates Venus Section. I want you to get New York on the line immediately and we’ll wind up this farce. Now jump, damn you!” The flight lieutenant looked alarmed and reached for the phone, but the purser smiled and moved it away from his hand. “Mitchell Courtenay, are you?” he asked kindly. He reached for another reel and put it in the viewer. “Here we are,” he said, after a little cranking. The lieutenant and I looked. It was the front page of the New York Times. The first column contained the obituary of Mitchell Courtenay, head of Fowler Schocken Associates Venus Section. I had been found frozen to death on Starrzelius Glacier near Little America. I had been tampering with my power pack, and it had failed. I read on long after the lieutenant had lost interest. Matt Runstead was taking over Venus Section. I was a loss to my profession. My wife, Dr. Nevin, had refused to be interviewed. Fowler Schocken was quoted in a ripe eulogy of me. I was a personal friend of Venus Pioneer Jack O’Shea, who had expressed shock and grief at the news. The purser said: “I picked that up in Capetown. Lieutenant, get this silly son of a bitch back between decks, will you please?” ” The guard had arrived. He slapped and kicked me all the way back to Number Six Hold. I caromed off somebody as the guard shoved me through the door into the red darkness. After the relatively clear air of the outside, the sunk was horrible. “What did you do?” the human cushion asked amiably, picking himself up. “I tried to tell them who I am …” That wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “What happens next?” I asked. “We land. We get quarters. We get to work. What contract are you on?” “Labor contract B, they said.” He whistled. “I guess they really had you, huh?” “What do you mean? What’s it all about?” “Oh-you were blind, were you? Too bad. B contract’s five years. For refugees, morons, and anybody else they can swindle into signing up. There’s a conduct clause. I got offered the B, but I told them if that was the best they could do I’d just go out and give myself up to the Brink’s Express. I talked them into an F contract- they must have needed help real bad. It’s one year and I can buy outside the company stores and things like that.”