Read Ebook: Runaway by Samachson Joseph Ashman William Illustrator

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Ebook has 117 lines and 8041 words, and 3 pages

Plato said tearfully, "Yes, ma'am." The tearfulness wasn't hard to manage; he'd learned the trick at school.

"That's too bad. How are you going to get there?"

"I don't know. I had just enough money to pay for this ticket."

"Doesn't the company correct mistakes, Conductor?"

"Not mistakes the passengers make," said the conductor sourly. "I'm sorry, boy, I'll have to take that ticket."

The woman's eyes flashed and, as the conductor moved on, she said, "The nasty thing. They have no consideration at all. Look, child." For a moment Plato thought she was going to offer him flight fare from Space Junction to Venusberg, but she was not, he discovered, as motherly as that. "You know what you'll do when you get off? Send a 'gram, collect, to your people in Venusberg. They'll wire you your fare. And you'll reach them in a couple of hours."

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, not feeling thankful at all. So it was all right to be sympathetic, he thought indignantly, up to the point where sympathy might cost her money. Like most people, she was free-handed only with advice.

Who wanted advice?

At Space Junction he waved her a shy farewell, and then turned and disappeared into the station crowd.

At the takeoff grounds, his heart sank. As he might have expected, the entrance to the space tarmac was well guarded. How was he going to become a stowaway on a spaceship if he couldn't even get close to it?

He wandered around outside, staring through the charged wire fence at the crowds, the spacemen, the ships inside. They were gigantic shining things, those wonderful ships, each so long that he realized for the first time how far away they must have been and how rapidly they must have traveled, for those he saw had seemed to him like shooting stars. They were pointed almost straight up. Near the stern of each ship was a vacuum-pit to absorb the radioactive exhaust gases.

His eye caught an old tub, its shininess dulled, its hull faintly scarred. Just such a ship, he thought with a thrill, as the one on which Comets Carter had been shanghaied on that momentous occasion when ...

A guard saw him peering through the fence, and said, "What are you looking at, kid?"

"Those ships," said Plato, honestly enough. And then he added, to throw the man off the track, "Gee, I'd be scared to go up in one of them. No, sir, you couldn't get me into one of them for a million credits."

The man laughed. "They're not for the likes of you. A lot of those ships go to other stars."

"That tub? Just an interplanetary freighter. But even that isn't for you. Now run along and mind your own business."

Plato was happy to run along. Unfortunately, he realized, running along didn't help him to get past the fence.

And then he had a fear-inspiring thought. He couldn't tell an interplanetary ship from an interstellar. What if he did manage, somehow, to get in and stow away--and then found himself on a ship bound for no more distant port than Earth, from which he could easily be sent home in disgrace?

He bought a paper and turned at once to the shipping news section. As he had hoped, every ship was listed. He checked off some of the names he had glimpsed on the field, and found happily that their destinations were printed in the most routine manner.

There still remained the question of how to get past the guards. This, he suddenly realized, was a question impossible to solve on an empty stomach. It had been many hours since he had eaten lunch.

There were a dozen restaurants in the spaceport, and he selected one carefully, studying the illuminated menus and the prices before daring to enter. If that motherly old woman had been as kind-hearted as she pretended to be, he wouldn't have had to worry so much about prices. As it was, he knew that he had money enough for only two days, and after that--his stomach could complain all it wanted to, it would have to go unfed.

He chose from the menu only items that he never tasted at school--dishes made from real plant and animal life, with just enough synthetics to give them flavor. He couldn't say that he liked what he ate, but at least it gave him the feeling of being on his own, of having made the break with his tame past as complete as possible. Earth-beef tasted too strong; Venus seaweed stew had a pungency that he didn't like.

He finished his plate only because he had been taught that to leave food over was wasteful. And for the first time he began to wonder what they would feed him on the spaceship. Suppose he got on one that wasn't scheduled to make port for five years--and all he received to eat was stuff like this? The thought made him shudder. Here was a hardship of space travel that the books he read had never mentioned.

After eating, he slumped back in his chair. He hadn't realized he was so completely exhausted until a hand shook his shoulder. Then he awoke with a start.

A waiter said, "This is no place to sleep, youngster."

"I'm sorry, sir. I was tired and I didn't realize."

"You been here for a long time. Waiting for someone?"

"Yes, sir. Something must have held him up."

"Seems to me that I noticed you walk in here about three hours ago. That's a long time to wait."

"That's what I thought, sir. I can't understand what happened."

"Well, you can't hang around here. I'll tell you what I'll do, though. I'll turn you over to the matron in our Lost and Found room, and she'll look out for you. Follow me."

He hadn't gone so far to be recaptured so easily. As they passed an exit door, Plato darted out. He heard the waiter's surprised shout, but he didn't wait to reply. In a second, he had lost himself in the crowd.

He knew now that if he was going to get aboard an interstellar vessel, he would have to do so soon. What would Comets Carter have done in Plato's place--if Comets had been in one of his brighter moods? And then he had it. He saw a messenger coming down the street, gleaming in his uniform, and, somewhat nervously, approached him.

"May I speak to you?" asked Plato, with school-taught politeness.

"What about, bud? I'm busy."

"So what?"

"Well, the thing is, they won't let me past the gate. So I thought that if I wore a messenger's uniform--"

The other boy glared at him. "Are you off your Norbert? I wouldn't let you wear this uniform for a zillion credits."

Plato swallowed nervously, and said in desperation, "I don't have a zillion credits, but I've got eight, and I'll give them to you if you let me wear it. Just half an hour, that's all it'll take. It's the last chance I'll have to ask him. He's bound for Rigel, and he won't be back for five years, and you see--"

His voice tapered to a thin, tearful squeak as the messenger looked at him.

"You're offering me eight space-lousy credits?"

"It's all I have. We'll just change clothes for a few minutes, and that'll be all. Please, I've got to see him. I know that if I do, he'll give me his autograph."

"Okay," said the messenger unexpectedly. "But hurry back. I'll be at the gate waiting for you."

As they exchanged clothes, Plato was almost feverish with excitement. But he knew that if he expected to get past the guard, he would have to control himself. The clothes didn't fit too well, even though the messenger was small, and he must do nothing that would arouse the guard's suspicion.

He said to the messenger, "Gee, thanks. You don't know how much this means to me." And then, with a mental grip on himself so tense that it hurt physically, he approached the guard, and said casually, "Earth 'gram for Captain Halverson."

The guard hardly looked at him. He was past the gate!

"Earth 'gram for Captain Brinjar," he muttered, doing his best to look bored, as if delivering 'grams to ships was an old thing to him. And then he was aboard!

It was not quite what he expected. The smooth walls were such as he might have found in his own dormitory. The quarters, he saw, were cramped, although for someone his size they were at least adequate. And the passageways, although brilliantly lighted, were mere narrow tunnels.

From the main passageway, other tunnels branched off bewilderingly, and Plato hesitated until he realized that his very confusion gave him an excuse for poking his nose into all sorts of places. He followed one of the tunnels until he came to a door: ENGINE ROOM--KEEP OUT.

He entered. A mechanic looked up.

"Earth 'gram for Captain Brinjar. They said he was around here."

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