Robert A Heinlein - Assignment in eternity (Collected Storie

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2024-11-29 0 0 1.18MB 216 页 5.9玖币
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GULF
THE FIRST-QUARTER ROCKET from Moonbase put him down at Pied-a-
Terre. The name he was traveling under began-by foresight-with the letter
“A”; he was through port inspection and into the shuttle tube to the city
ahead of the throng. Once in the tube car he went to the men’s washroom
and locked himself in.
Quickly he buckled on the safety belt he found there, snapped its hooks to
the wall fixtures, and leaned over awkwardly to remove a razor from his
bag. The surge caught him in that position; despite the safety belt he
bumped his head-and swore. He straightened up and plugged in the razor.
His moustache vanished; he shortened his sideburns, trimmed the comers
of his eyebrows, and brushed them up.
He towelled his hair vigorously to remove the oil that had sleeked it down,
combed it loosely into a wavy mane. The car was now riding in a smooth,
unaccelerated 300 mph; he let himself out of the safety belt without
unhooking it from the walls and, working very rapidly, peeled off his
moonsuit, took from his bag and put on a tweedy casual outfit suited to
outdoors on Earth and quite unsuited to Moon Colony’s air-conditioned
corridors.
His slippers he replaced with walking shoes from the bag; he stood up. Joel
Abner, commercial traveler, had disappeared; in his place was Captain
Joseph Gilead, explorer, lecturer, and writer. Of both names he was the
sole user; neither was his birth name.
He slashed the moonsuit to ribbons and flushed it down the water closet,
added “Joel Abner’s” identification card; then peeled a plastic skin off his
travel bag and let the bits follow the rest- The bag was now pearl grey and
rough, instead of dark brown and smooth. The slippers bothered him; he
was afraid they might stop up the car’s plumbing. He contented himself with
burying them in the waste receptacle.
The acceleration warning sounded as he was doing this; he barely had time
to get back into the belt. But, as the car plunged into the solenoid field and
surged to a stop, nothing remained of Joel Abner but some unmarked
underclothing, very ordinary toilet articles, and nearly two dozen spools of
microfilm equally appropriate-until examined-to a commercial traveler or a
lecturer-writer. He planned not to let them be examined as long as he was
alive.
1
He waited in the washroom until he was sure of being last man out of the
car, then went forward in- to the next car, left by its exit, and headed for the
lift to the ground level.
“New Age Hotel, sir,” a voice pleaded near his ear. He felt a hand fumbling
at the grip of his travel bag.
He repressed a reflex to defend the bag and looked the speaker over. At
first glance he seemed an under- sized adolescent in a smart uniform and a
pillbox cap. Further inspection showed premature wrinkles and the features
of a man at least forty. The eyes were glazed. A pituitary case, he thought
to himself, and on the hop as well. “New Age Hotel,” the runner repeated.
“Best mechanos in town, chief. There’s a discount if you’re just down from
the moon.”
Captain Gilead, when in town as Captain Gilead, always stayed at the old
Savoy. But the notion of going to the New Age appealed to him; in that in-
credibly huge, busy, and ultramodern hostelry he might remain unnoticed
until he had had time to do what had to be done.
He disliked mightily the idea of letting go his bag. Nevertheless it would be
out of character not to let the runner carry the bag; it would call attention to
himself-and the bag. He decided that this unhealthy runt could not outrun
him even if he himself were on crutches; it would suffice to keep an eye on
the bag.
“Lead on, comrade,” he answered heartily, surrendering the bag. There had
been no hesitation at all; he had let go the bag even as the hotel runner
reached for it.
“Okay, chief.” The runner was first man into an empty lift; he went to the
back of the car and set the bag down beside him. Gilead placed himself so
that his foot rested firmly against his bag and faced for- ward as other
travelers crowded in. The car started.
The lift was jammed; Gilead was subjected to body pressures on every
side-but he noticed an additional, unusual, and uncalled-for pressure
behind him.
His right hand moved suddenly and clamped down on a skinny wrist and a
hand clutching something. Gilead made no further movement, nor did the
owner of the hand attempt to draw away or make any objection. They
remained so until the car reached the surface. When the passengers had
spilled out he reached behind him with his left hand, recovered his bag and
dragged the wrist and its owner out of the car.
2
It was, of course, the runner; the object in his fist was Gilead’s wallet. “You
durn near lost that. chief,” the runner announced with no show of
embarrassment. “It was falling out of your pocket.”
Gilead liberated the wallet and stuffed it into an inner pocket. “Fell right
through the zipper,” he answered cheerfully. “Well, let’s find a cop.’
The runt tried to pull away, “You got nothing on me!”
Gilead considered the defense. In truth, he had nothing. His wallet was
already out of sight. As to witnesses, the other lift passengers were already
gone-nor had they seen anything. The lift itself was automatic. He was
simply a man in the odd position of detaining another citizen by the wrist.
And Gilead himself did not want to talk to the police.
He let go that wrist. “On your way, comrade. We’ll call it quits.”
The runner did not move. “How about my tip?”
Gilead was beginning to like this rascal. Locating a loose half credit in his
change pocket he flipped it at the runner, who grabbed it out of the air but
still didn’t leave. “I’ll take your bag now. Gimme.”
“No, thanks, chum. I can find your delightful inn without further help. One
side, please.”
“Oh, yeah? How about my commission? I gotta carry your bag, else how
they gonna know I brung you in? Gimme.”
Gilead was delighted with the creature’s unabashed insistence. He found a
two-credit piece and passed it over. “There’s your cumshaw. Now beat it,
before I kick your tail up around your shoulders.”
“You and who else?”
Gilead chuckled and moved away down the con- course toward the station
entrance to the New Age Hotel. His subconscious sentries informed him
immediately that the runner had not gone back toward the lift as expected,
but was keeping abreast him in the crowd. He considered this. The runner
might very well be what he appeared to be, common city riffraff who
combined casual thievery with his overt occupation. On the other hand-
He decided to unload. He stepped suddenly off the sidewalk into the
entrance of a drugstore and stopped Just inside the door to buy a
newspaper. While his copy was being printed, he scooped up, apparently
as an afterthought, three standard pneumo mailing tubes. As he paid for
them he palmed a pad of gummed address labels.
3
A glance at the mirrored wall showed him that his shadow had hesitated
outside but was still watching him. Gilead went on back to the shop’s soda
fountain and slipped into an unoccupied booth. Although the floor show was
going on-a remarkably shapely ecdysiast was working down toward her last
string of beads-he drew the booth’s curtain.
Shortly the call light over the booth flashed discreetly; he called, “Come in!”
A pretty and very young waitress came inside the curtain. Her plastic
costume covered without concealing.
She glanced around. “Lonely?”
“No, thanks, I’m tired.”
“How about a redhead, then? Real cute-“
“I really am tired. Bring me two bottles of beer, unopened, and some
pretzels.”
“Suit yourself, sport.” She left.
With speed he opened the travel bag, selected nine spools of microfilm, and
loaded them into the three mailing tubes, the tubes being of the common
three-spool size. Gilead then took the filched pad of address labels,
addressed the top one to “Raymond Calhoun, P. 0. Box 1060, Chicago” and
commenced to draw with great care in the rectangle reserved for electric-
eye sorter. The address he shaped in arbitrary symbols was intended not to
be read, but to be scanned automatically. The hand-written address was
merely a precaution, in case a robot sorter should reject his hand-drawn
symbols as being imperfect and thereby turn the tube over to a human
postal clerk for readdressing.
He worked fast, but with the care of an engraver. The waitress returned
before he had finished. The call light warned him; he covered the label with
his elbow and kept it covered.
She glanced at the mailing tubes as she put down the beer and a bowl of
pretzels. “Want me to mail those?”
He had another instant of split-second indecision. When he had stepped out
of the tube car he had been reasonably sure, first, that the persona of Joel
Abner, commercial traveler, had not been penetrated, and, second, that the
transition from Abner to Gilead had been accomplished without arousing
suspicion. The pocket-picking episode had not alarmed him, but had
caused him to reclassify those two propositions from calculated certainties
to unproved variables. He had proceeded to test them at once; they were
now calculated certainties again-of the opposite sort. Ever since he had
spotted his erstwhile porter, the New Age runner, as standing outside this
same drugstore his subconscious had been clanging like a burglar alarm- It
4
摘要：

GULFTHEFIRST-QUARTERROCKETfromMoonbaseputhimdownatPied-a-Terre.Thenamehewastravelingunderbegan-byforesight-withthelette “A”;hewasthroughportinspectionandintotheshuttletubetothecityaheadofthethrong.Onceinthetubecarhewenttothemen’swashroomandlockedhimselfin.Quicklyhebuckledonthesafetybelthefoundthe...

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