Ron Goulart - Spacehawk Inc

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Ron Goulart

SPACEHAWK INC.

DAW BOOKS, INC.

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHES

1301 Avenue of the Americas New York, N. Y. 10019

Cover art by Hans Arnold.

FIRST PRINTING, DECEMBER 1974

123456789

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

Chapter 1

He was glad to see the priest come through the wall.

Kip Bundy rolled out from under the heavyset catman, now distracted, who'd been pummeling

him. He grabbed his trousers off one of the twelve silver bedposts of the floating bed, went hopping and

dodging around the room as he tugged them back on.

"Can we not all work in harmony, brothers and sisters?" asked Father Cog, his right forefinger

still smoking. "For truly, 'tis clearly the will of the Mysterious Something which—"

"Get the little fleshie before he hightails it through that hole in the wall!" shouted Murdstone Slim,

the catman who'd been jumping up and down on Kip until recently.

Kip was six feet tall, with sandy hair, but he seemed small compared to the huge

three-hundred-pound Slim. "Watch those slurs, Slim," he warned, stopping in front of the oval opening

Father Cog had just cut in the wall of the bedroom. "Making fun of a man's size or components isn't

considered—oof!"

Two slightly smaller catmen tackled Kip. One's head burrowed into his groin, the other got a

shaggy grip on his throat.

"You ain't hardly a man," observed Murdstone Slim, "more a boy."

"He's twenty-seven," the girl on the floating bed pointed out. She was thin, lovely, silver-haired.

Twenty-two years old and wearing a lycra all-season pajama top. The Rehab Bureau tattoo number

showed on her bare upper arm.

"What is chronological age?" asked Father Cog. "For are we not all but babes in the eyes of the

Mysterious Something which—"

"Break a couple of his limbs!" Slim urged the two catmen who were struggling with Kip.

"Unk," said one of them, as Kip managed to kick him in the knee.

"Ah, this violence," sighed the black-suited android priest. "Tis a sorrowful sight to the

Mysterious Something which—" He raised his left hand, pointed his forefinger at the furry struggle. A

sizzling yellow beam shot from the tip of his finger.

The catman who'd said "Unk" said it again. He swayed, going slack and falling over onto the

tinted lucite floor.

"That's very neat," remarked Murdstone Slim. "How much would it cost me to have—"

Father Cog's middle finger hummed.

A sonic wave slammed into Murdstone Slim, lifted him up, threw him back. The catman's large

furry head bonged into one of the dozen bedposts before he toppled down onto a spun-wire rug.

"I hope the Mysterious Something will forgive me for resorting to such measures. Yet, as several

of the oldest texts tell us, it—"

"The other one!" The silver-haired girl waved her hand at Kip, who was being throttled by the

remaining catman.

"Here now," said the android priest, turning. "We'll have no more of your brawling." His little

finger sent a thin purple beam toward the cat-man's back.

"Yow!" he exclaimed, and collapsed on top of Kip.

"There now." The android smiled benevolently at the girl. "I've surely done a good afternoon's

work for the Mysterious Something which—"

"Schmuck!" the girl said to him as she leaped from her bed. "He's going to smother."

Kip was still underneath the senseless catman, choking, waving his hands and trying to unseat

him.

"Will you please help?" the girl asked the priest.

"To be sure, my dear. In fact, I have a finger here, some place, which has telekinetic abilities. I'll

lift that oaf away in a jiffy." He aimed his right hand and pointed his ring finger.

A hymn started playing, but the catman remained weighing down Kip.

"Well, sir, may the Mysterious Something bless me if I can figure why that—"

"Your thumb, idiot," gasped Kip.

"Oh, so it is. I'm so involved with the work of the Mvsterious Something here on Barnum that I

sometimes forget, which finger is which." He cocked the thumb and the catman went flipping off onto the

floor.

"Oh, dear sweet Kip," The girl put her hands on his shoulders, lifting him up. "Have they done

terrible things to you?"

"No, they were talking about doing terrible things, but fortunately ... well, that isn't quite the

word." He got to his feet, with the lovely girl's help.

"Tis all right, I expect no thanks." Father Cog slid his hands into his black pockets. "Now go

ahead and kiss the lass, I'll turn me back."

Kip narrowed one eye. "What's wrong with your voice mechanism?"

"Not a blessed thing, me boy."

"You didn't have a brogue, if that's what that is, the last time I saw you."

Nodding his head, Father Cog replied, "Aye, lad, but that, I needn't remind you, was over a

week ago. Up on the family satellite 'twas. Since then, me lad, a good deal of—"

"Peterkin," said Kip.

"Don't get angry and swear," said the girl, stroking Kip's cheek.

"Peterkin is my cousin," said Kip. "Peterkin Bobbs," vice president in charge of Research and

Design for the Barnum division of Bundy Konglom Enterprises."

"You never talk much about your family."

"Me boy," said Father Cog," 'twas indeed Peterkin, bless the lad, who modified me some. Twas

his feeling, it was, that I should be a little mellower for the work I'm doing down here among the fallen

and—"

"That simp," said Kip, striding up to the hole in the wall. "I told him not to go tinkering around

with the basic designs."

"But 'tis a sad fact, lad, that Peterkin outranks you in the family company," reminded the

mechanical priest. "Now, far be it from me to sermonize. Still and all, I can't help thinking that a lad with

your potential would rise much higher in his own family's vast company if he didn't, well, fuck up so

much."

"Your shoes," said the silver-haired girl. "You don't want to go storming out of here without your

shoes, Kip."

Kip let his breath out through his nose and turned his back on the hole. "I guess I won't go

storming out at all. Let Peterkin fiddle around, I’ll stay here in the Fetlock Estates Minimum Security

Rehabilitation Condominium. Looking after our therapy machines is okay work for me."

"Would that I didn't have the news that I do have for you, me lad."

"What now?"

"Twas not merely to save your bacon that I burst in here, though the Mysterious Something

knows I'm glad to do that," said Father Cog. "I was sent by your Uncle Wenzel to bring you home."

"Home?" Kip pointed at the ceiling. "Up to the satellite, you mean?"

The android pointed to the wall on their right.

"Actually, lad, the satellite's orbit pattern should have it in a position about there at this—"

"What does Uncle Wenzel want?"

"The Mysterious Something only knows. I'm to gather you up and deliver you to the connect-ship

port in time for the next shuttle."

"Oh, sweet dear Kip," said the girl, sitting down on the edge of the bed and crossing her long

lovely legs, "we're to be separated. For weeks, months, perhaps for an eternity."

"I'll be back tomorrow at the latest," Kip assured her.

"How little we know of our own future," said Father Cog.

"You hinting at something?"

"I can only suggest you don't make any appointments for tomorrow, not on this planet anyway."

Kip had been walking toward the seated girl. He stopped now. "Where's he sending me? This

job here was supposed to last... as long as I wanted it to."

"Hum." A small, nervous lizard man in a lycra kimono was standing on the threshold of the hole in

the wall. "Please, Mr. Bundy, Father Cog, don't think I'm ungrateful for all Bundy Konglom Enterprises

has done for Fetlock Estates. On the contrary, this is one of the finest criminal and social misfit

rehabilitation and readjustment centers in the entire Barnum System of planets. However..."

"We'll fix the hole," Kip told him.

"In fact, I have a finger for that," said Father Cog, examining his hands. "No, now that I think of

it, it's a toe."

"Would that it were only a gaping hole ripped out of a lovely wall which was the problem," said

Second Dr. Geechie, the acting head of the rehabilitation center. "Alas, it is not. Oh, no."

"Don't step on the catman," warned the girl.

Second Dr. Geechie had been in the process of climbing in through the hole. "I'm not in any way

bigoted about alternate life-forms. We can't all be lizards, can we? Still, Mr. Bundy, catmen all over the

floor.... It's a dreadful mess for someone to have to clean."

"They tried to kill him," explained the girl. "That's not Kip's fault. They broke in here and—"

"You're looking very fit, young lady," observed the lizardman as he plunged over the prone

catman and into the girl's bedroom. "One would hardly guess that a few scant months ago you were a

notorious brain-tapper."

"Thank you, Second Doctor."

"Which is why it saddens me to see you cavorting with young Bundy here."

"We weren't cavorting, Geechie," said Kip. "And even if we were cavorting, that's not a crime on

this particular planet."

"I mustn't let my justified wrath get me off the main point." Geechie rubbed his dry green hands

together. "These catmen I see before me ... I know why, or at least I've heard disturbing rumors as to

why they came here to take revenge upon you." "A misunderstanding, Geechie," said Kip, grinning at him

and easing toward the gap in the wall. "I'm not even going to press charges against them."

"The bioenergetics robots," continued the lizard doctor slowly. "The six bioenergetics robots

donated so graciously by your family's company, Mr. Bundy. You tinkered with them."

"They were too stodgy."

"Stodgy they were, perhaps," said Geechie. "Now they are all playing whist, blackjack, coon-can

and honeymoon bridge." He rubbed his scaly hands together once more. "Not only do they play cards

with those patients entrusted to them, but they also cheat at it."

"No, they don't cheat," said Kip. "They beat Murdstone Slim and his cronies fair and square.

See, Slim may be a cardsharp on Murdstone, but this is a more sophisticated planet. He was simply

outclassed by my robots."

"Besides wliich," added the girl, "he allowed his passions, not his head, to rule him."

"Nevertheless," said Second Dr. Geechie, "I find myself with—"

"May the Mysterious Something bless and keep you, Doctor," put in Father Cog. He took hold

of Kip's arm. "This clever lad and I have a fast-approaching appointment with a connect-ship. You

needn't fear, BKE will put all your mechanisms back in topnotch order before many a day has passed."

"Goodbye, dear sweet Kip," said the girl.

Kip was yanked out into the corridor before he could reply.

Chapter 2

"How the heck are you, Kipper?"

"Splendid, Peterkin."

"Oops, did I get lubricant on your tunic sleeve? Sorry as heck about that. I've been tinkering—"

"Speaking of tinkering, why does Father Cog have a brogue?"

Really humanizes him, doesn't it? But let's not stand around here in the corridors gabbing,

Kipper. Uncle is pretty anxious to have a little gabfest with you. Oops, did I get that acid on your elbow.

Oh, yeah, there's a patch of it eating the seam of my lab smock."

"What does Uncle Wenzel want?"

"He has some kind of family chitchat in mind, Kipper old kid. Do you see something right here on

my ear?"

"A rust tick."

"Darn. I've been having trouble with those little buggers lately. They've completely infested Al

Jolson."

"Who?"

"Not who, what. Al Jolson is an entertainment andy I'm working on in my spare time, special

order for an entertainment complex out on Murdstone that calls itself Showbiz Heaven. Gee, it looks like

I got blackface all over your back when I greeted you. Excuse it, please."

"Blackface makeup, that's something from your android work?"

"Al Jolson made himself up as a Negro person, got down on one knee and sang about his mother

-Earth System, mid-twentieth century or thereabouts. It's quite interesting, Kipper old kid, when you

realize a good deal of lizardman mother songs are really variants of—"

"You sure, Pete, you don't know what our uncle has in mind for me?"

"Honest injun, Kipper."

"It's not something you suggested to him, some exciting assignment at the far edges of the Barnum

System maybe?"

"Heck no. I don't have that kind of drag with Unc anyhow, Kipper. You may think I do, on

account of I'm a little higher up in the company than you are even though we're roughly the same age. But

I really can't put a bug in his—"

"Okay. Here's his office door.">

"See you soonest, Kipper. Maybe we can have lunch before you embark. I remodeled the

kitchen andies while you were away. The crepe chef, in particular, is greatly—"

"Embark?"

Chapter 3

The silver door in front of Kip opened, then, before he could enter his uncle's office, wooshed

shut again.

"Hold on, Kip," called out a voice on the other side of the door.

The door wobbled, reopened.

Kip dived through. "Where are you going to send me?"

"Sit down, we'll have a little gabfest."

"You've got to stop talking like Peterkin." Kip ignored the lounging chair which wheeled up and

nudged against his leg.

His uncle was a long lean man of sixty, with crinkly white hair, window-plastic spectacles and an

aluminum nose. He sat behind a desk made of the Bundy brand of hugging neoplastic. It was wrapped

tightly around the older man, fitting itself to the contours of his lower body. "I hear you've been kicking up

your heels down on Barnum again ... oh, ha ha ha!"

"Something funny in my conduct?"

"Ha ha! No, it's this silly desk tickling my toes," replied his uncle. "Every once in a while we get a

silly piece of neoplastic and ... ha!"

Kip wandered over to the oval window which gave him a look at the planet Barnum. He thought

for a few seconds of the silver-haired girl. "Hints," he said. "Hints are being dropped that I'm going to

embark on a new job, on a new planet."

"Well, Kip, as a matter of fact," said Uncle Wenzel, "I might as well tell you that not everyone in

the top echelons of the company is happy with you."

"Peterkin and who else?"

"Your cousin is very fond of you. He told me only yesterday he thought you were 'plenty okay' in

his book."

Kip left the view hole. "Every time I improvise at all, everybody acts as though—"

"Converting those robots into mountebanks Kip," said his uncle. "We have enough to worry

about with the now and then—oh, ha ha—now and then malfunctions of the products in our machine and

mechanism divisions. There's no need for you to—"

"Playing cards, that's a lot better therapy than anything Peterkin or Second Dr. Geechie came up

with."

"And cavorting with one of the inmates. Now, Kip, you know I'm not the kind of person to insist

that the family name be kept spotless. However, you might ask yourself the next time you're about to

cavort, 'Is this worthy of a Bundy? Is what I am about to do going to besmirch the honorable name

of...?'"

"Did you ever say that while you were dropping your pants?"

Uncle Wenzel replied, "I never led the kind of life you do, Kip. Oh, not that I didn't... but let's get

to the business at hand. Sit down, will you?" He gestured at the hugging neoplastic chair in front of his

desk.

"I don't trust that particular chair. I suspect, maybe, it's a little gay."

"Really? I've never been very good at detecting that sort of thing. Once, as a result, the

Archbishop of Jupiter ... Well, where are my notes?

Yes, here. Could you at least squat? I like to look at a man eye to eye."

Kip carried a tin hassock from the corner, sat in front of the desk. "Where do you want me to

go?"

"You have to understand that this job, Kip, isn't a punishment," began his uncle. "Not that there

aren't those in the higher echelons who are dissatisfied with your nonchalant approach to the family

business. This assignment, however, calls for both skill and daring."

"Oh, so?"

"You've never, I believe, been to the planet Malagra?"

"Malagra?"

"It's actually not as unpleasant as it's been painted, so they tell me."

"It's known as the pesthole of the Barnum System."

"Well, it is a pesthole, but there are compensations."

"Such as?"

"I'll give you a travel brochure before you leave."

"That's where you intend to ship me?"

"Malagra, yes. This assignment comes under the heading of trouble-shooting, and calls for both

skill and—"

"Butlers," said Kip, snapping his fingers.

His uncle blinked. "As a matter of fact, yes. How'd you guess that?"

"I'm a lot better informed about what BKE is doing than you think," answered Kip. "About a

month ago, at the suggestion of the Barnum government, and especially the Political Espionage Office, we

shipped a dozen—"

"Ten," corrected Uncle Wenzel.

"Okay, ten of our new valet-butler androids, the improved MMG-762 models," continued Kip.

"Usually such a small order isn't worth the trouble, but this was done at the insistence of PEO. Diplomatic

relations with Malagra are touchy right now, and we depend on them for most of our dummler beans,

synthetic gluten and malzbergium ore."

"Doing the government of our home planet a little favor is a lot cheaper than the old kickback

system."

"What went wrong?"

"The MMG andies weren't sufficiently tested, because it was a rush job. Always is when you're

involved with those Political Espionage boys. Well, some new testing results came in yesterday, based on

experiments conducted with MMGs still here in our Barnum warehouse. They indicate, well, that there's

a possibility, not a strong one perhaps, that under stress these mechanical butlers may refuse to serve.

What's more, they got a very high potential surliness rating. Obviously, nobody wants a butler who's

going to refuse to carry out the garbage or help you out of your tunic. Nobody wants a valet who's going

to get salty with him."

Kip laughed.

"Is that chair bothering you?" his uncle asked.

"I was really laughing," he said. "I just realized the problem —we can't recall the androids."

"Obviously not, in this case," said Uncle Wenzel. "In a normal situation we could simply recall the

damn things, make the necessary repairs and ship them back to the customers. Which is what we did

when those masseuse androids developed cold extremities. This, as you realize, is different... a very

ticklish situation."

"Does PEO know about it?"

"Oh, yes, they know," answered his uncle, rubbing at his aluminum nose. "Frankly, they're even

more determined than our own board of directors that the MMGs we sent to Malagra don't get recalled.

A recall of even one of them, so the Barnum government feels, might cause hard feelings. Lots of them up

there at Malagra are very touchy. It could lead to a major political incident"

Kip said, "Suppose some of the android butlers do go blooey and start getting surly? That's going

to make for an incident, too."

"So far, from what I've been able to find out, all of them are behaving well," said Uncle Wenzel.

"Malagra, as is common with pestholes, doesn't have the best of communications systems. Each of the

MMGs, as you may be aware, was sold to a different customer. Communications being what they are,

we can't be completely certain of the exact status of each one."

Standing, Kip asked, "You want me to go there and repair them, huh?"

Uncle Wenzel blinked once again. "Well, as a matter of fact, yes. You are, when you put your

mind to it, a very skilled young fellow." He began struggling, pushing at his hugging desk. "I want to get

up now, idiot... oh, ha ha ha. Let loose."

Kip booted the desk in the side, causing it to release his uncle. "I don't know. I like what I've

been doing at the rehabilitation center, I like most of the people. I don't—"

"There's no possibility of your going back there, Kip," said his uncle. "I might as well tell you that

some of the board members wanted to transfer you to the contest division of our pseudo-soap division

on Esperanza. I stood up for you, since, after all, your late father and I started this—"

"Okay, you don't have to bring Dad in. I'll go to Malagra."

"Good, very good, Kip." He walked to a stuffed calico table near the wall. "You have a very

difficult job ahead of you, one that is going to require the utmost skill and daring. You have to locate each

of the MMG androids, give them a checkup and make the repairs that are necessary." He took a sheet of

faxpaper off the tabletop. "This seems to be a list of the customers.... Oh, and not only do you have to

repair the damn things, you have to do it on the sly. None of the owners must know you've been at work,

because that in itself may cause an incident."

"It's going to take skill and daring, sure enough."

"You can probably guess that some members of the board don't feel you can accomplish this. I

believe you can."

"I can," said Kip. "When do I leave?"

His uncle was frowning down at another sheet of faxpaper. "This next isn't My idea exactly, Kip.

Some of the fellows on the board thought it would be a good idea if you had someone to look after you

on the flight out. The idea be—"

"Look after me? You mean a chaperon?"

"You could put it in those terms," replied his uncle. "This fellow seems to be highly dependable.

Our Publicity Corps hired him to go out to Mala-gra to do a photo essay on our new kelp plant there.

He has a list of credits which is quite impressive, been working on a lot of the Coult chain of magazines.

He's free-lancing at the moment, and his name is ... Palma. Yes, Palma. You'll be sharing a suite on the

space-liner."

"That's splendid," said Kip. "Does he take me for walks around the decks and play games with

me?"

"This is the board's idea, not mine. They feel an older, more responsible man will be a stabilizing

influence for you."

"Okay, it's only a three-day trip, isn't it?" Kip nodded toward the calico table, "What else?"

"This shouldn't annoy you," said Uncle Wenzel as he picked up a third sheet. "You're going to

need a cover story, some reason for being on Malagra. We're going to pretend you work for one of our

subsidiaries out there."

"Which?"

"Spacehawk, Inc.," said his uncle. "That's our private investigating service, as you probably

know. You won't mind pretending to be a detective?"

Kip grinned. "Nope, not at all."

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RonGoulartSPACEHAWKINC.DAWBOOKS,INC.DONALDA.WOLLHEIM,PUBLISHES1301AvenueoftheAmericasNewYork,N.Y.10019COPYRIGHT©,1974,BYRONGOULARTAllRightsReserved.CoverartbyHansArnold.FIRSTPRINTING,DECEMBER1974123456789PRINTEDINU.S.A.Chapter1Hewasgladtoseethepriestcomethroughthewall.KipBundyrolledoutfromunderthehe...

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