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Read Ebook: Tolliver's Orbit by Fyfe H B Horace Bowne Bernklau Illustrator
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Ebook has 173 lines and 8133 words, and 4 pages
TOLLIVER'S ORBIT
was slow--but it wasn't boring. And it would get you there--as long as you weren't going anywhere anyhow!
Johnny Tolliver scowled across the desk at his superior. His black thatch was ruffled, as if he had been rubbed the wrong way.
"I didn't ask you to cut out your own graft, did I?" he demanded. "Just don't try to sucker me in on the deal. I know you're operating something sneaky all through the colony, but it's not for me."
The big moon-face of Jeffers, manager of the Ganymedan branch of Koslow Spaceways, glowered back at him. Its reddish tinge brightened the office noticeably, for such of Ganymede's surface as could be seen through the transparent dome outside the office window was cold, dim and rugged. The glowing semi-disk of Jupiter was more than half a million miles distant.
"Try not to be simple--for once!" growled Jeffers. "A little percentage here and there on the cargoes never shows by the time figures get back to Earth. The big jets in the home office don't care. They count it on the estimates."
"You asked any of them lately?" Tolliver prodded.
Tolliver rammed his fists into the side pockets of his loose blue uniform jacket. He shook his head, grinning resignedly.
Jeffers fidgeted in his chair, causing it to creak under the bulk of his body. It had been built for Ganymede, but not for Jeffers.
"Aw, it's not like that," the manager muttered. "You can ease out whenever your contract's up. Think we'd bend a good orbit on your account?"
Tolliver stared at him silently, but the other had difficulty meeting his eye.
"All right, then!" Jeffers snapped after a long moment. "If you want it that way, either you get in line with us or you're through right now!"
"You can't fire me," retorted the pilot pityingly. "I came out here on a contract. Five hundred credits a week base pay, five hundred for hazardous duty. How else can you get pilots out to Jupiter?"
"Doesn't matter," answered Tolliver, grinning amiably. "The hazardous part is just being on the same moon as you for the next six months."
He winked and walked out, deliberately leaving the door open behind him so as to enjoy the incoherent bellowing that followed him.
Tolliver began to have his doubts the next day; which was "Tuesday" by the arbitrary calender constructed to match Ganymede's week-long journey around Jupiter.
His contract guaranteed a pilot's rating, but someone had neglected to specify the type of craft to be piloted.
On the bulletin board, Tolliver's name stood out beside the number of one of the airtight tractors used between the dome city and the spaceport, or for hauling cross-country to one of the mining domes.
He soon found that there was nothing for him to do but hang around the garage in case a spaceship should land. The few runs to other domes seemed to be assigned to drivers with larger vehicles.
The following day was just as boring, and the next more so. He swore when he found the assignment unchanged by "Friday." Even the reflection that it was payday was small consolation.
"Hey, Johnny!" said a voice at his shoulder. "The word is that they're finally gonna trust you to take that creeper outside."
Tolliver turned to see Red Higgins, a regular driver.
"What do you mean?"
"What's wrong with that?" asked Tolliver. "Outside of the way they keep handing out soft jobs to nephews, I mean."
"Aah, these young punks just come out for a few months so they can go back to Earth making noises like spacemen. Sometimes there's no reason but them for sending a ship back with a crew instead of in an economy orbit. Wait till you see the baggage you'll have to load!"
Later in the day-period, Tolliver recalled this warning. Under a portable, double-chambered plastic dome blown up outside the ship's airlock, a crewman helped him load two trunks and a collection of bags into the tractor. He was struggling to suppress a feeling of outrage at the waste of fuel involved when the home-office relative emerged.
She was about five feet four and moved as if she walked lightly even in stronger gravity than Ganymede's. Her trim coiffure was a shade too blonde which served to set off both the blue of her eyes and the cap apparently won from one of the pilots. She wore gray slacks and a heavy sweater, like a spacer.
"They were making dates," said the girl. "Were they ribbing me, or is it true that none of the four of them goes back with the ship?"
"It's true enough," Tolliver assured her. "We need people out here, and it costs a lot to make the trip. They found they could send back loaded ships by 'automatic' flight--that is, a long, slow, economical orbit and automatic signalling equipment. Then they're boarded approaching Earth's orbit and landed by pilots who don't have to waste their time making the entire trip."
He followed the signals of a spacesuited member of the port staff and maneuvered out of the dome. Then he headed the tractor across the frozen surface of Ganymede toward the permanent domes of the city.
"How is it here?" asked the girl. "They told me it's pretty rough."
"What did you expect?" asked Tolliver. "Square dances with champagne?"
"Don't be silly. Daddy says I'm supposed to learn traffic routing and the business management of a local branch. They probably won't let me see much else."
"You never can tell," said the pilot, yielding to temptation. "Any square inch of Ganymede is likely to be dangerous."
"Yeah," he went on, "right now, I don't do a thing but drive missions from the city to the spaceport."
Tolliver pursed his lips and put on a shrewd expression.
"Don't sneer at Ganymede, honey!" he warned portentously. "Many a man who did isn't here today. Take the fellow who used to drive this mission!"
"You can call me Betty. What happened to him?"
"I'll tell you some day," Tolliver promised darkly. "This moon can strike like a vicious animal."
"Oh, they told me there was nothing alive on Ganymede!"
"I was thinking of the mountain slides," said the pilot. "Not to mention volcanic puffballs that pop out through the frozen crust where you'd least expect. That's why I draw such high pay for driving an unarmored tractor."
"You use armored vehicles?" gasped the girl.
She was now sitting bolt upright in the swaying seat. Tolliver deliberately dipped one track into an icy hollow. In the light gravity, the tractor responded with a weird, floating lurch.
"Those slides," he continued. "Ganymede's only about the size of Mercury, something like 3200 miles in diameter, so things get heaped up at steep angles. When the rock and ice are set to sliding, they come at you practically horizontally. It doesn't need much start, and it barrels on for a long way before there's enough friction to stop it. If you're in the way--well, it's just too bad!"
He enlarged upon other dangers to be encountered on the satellite, taking care to impress the newcomer with the daredeviltry of John Tolliver, driver of "missions" across the menacing wastes between dome and port.
In the end, he displayed conclusive evidence in the form of the weekly paycheck he had received that morning. It did not, naturally, indicate he was drawing the salary of a space pilot. Betty looked thoughtful.
"I'm retiring in six months if I'm still alive," he said bravely, edging the tractor into the airlock at their destination. "Made my pile. No use pushing your luck too far."
His charge seemed noticeably subdued, but cleared her throat to request that Tolliver guide her to the office of the manager. She trailed along as if with a burden of worry upon her mind, and the pilot's conscience prickled.
Remembering his grudge against the manager, he took pleasure in walking in without knocking.
"Jeffers," he announced, "this is ... just call her Betty."
The manager's jowled features twisted into an expression of welcome as jovial as that of a hungry crocodile.
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