And now, almost suddenly, the red dot was more than a dot. My time was up. A red disk leapt up at me; the ship swung around me; I gasped and shut my eyes tight. Giants' hands gripped my arms and legs and head, gently but with great firmness, and tried to pull me in two. In that moment it came to me that Peter Laskin had died like this. He'd made the same guesses I had, and he'd tried to hide in the access tube. But he'd slipped … as I was slipping … From the control room came a multiple shriek of tearing metal. I tried to dig my feet into the hard tube walls. Somehow they held.
When I got my eyes open, the red dot was shrinking into nothing.
The puppeteer president insisted that I be put in a hospital for observation. I didn't fight the idea. My face and hands were flaming red, with blisters rising, and I ached as though I'd been beaten. Rest and tender loving care; that was what I wanted.
I was floating between a pair of sleeping plates, hideously uncomfortable, when the nurse came to announce a visitor. I knew who it was from her peculiar expression.
«What can get through a General Products bull?» I asked it.
«I hoped you would tell me.» The president rested on its single back leg, holding a stick that gave off green incense-smelling smoke.
«And so I will. Gravity.»
«Do not play with me, Beowulf Shaeffer. This matter is vital.»
«I'm not playing. Does your world have a moon?»
«That information is classified.» The puppeteers are cowards. Nobody knows where they come from, and nobody is likely to find out.
«Do you know what happens when a moon gets too close to its primary?»
«It falls apart.»
«Why?»
«I do not know.»
«Tides.»
«What is a tide?»
Oho, said I to myself, said I. «I'm going to try to tell you. The Earth's moon is almost two thousand miles in diameter and does not rotate with respect to Earth. I want you to pick two rocks on the moon, one at the point nearest the Earth, one at the point farthest away.»
«Very well.»
«Now, isn't it obvious that if those rocks were left to themselves, they'd fall away from each other? They're in two different orbits, mind you, concentric orbits, one almost two thousand miles outside the other. Yet those rocks are forced to move at the same orbital speed.»
«The one outside is moving faster.»
«Good point. So there is a force trying to pull the moon apart. Gravity holds it together. Bring the moon close enough to Earth, and those two rocks would simply float away.»
«I see. Then this 'tide' tried to pull your ship apart. It was powerful enough in the lifesystem of the Institute ship to pull the acceleration chairs out of their mounts.»
«And to crush a human being. Picture it. The ship's nose was just seven miles from the center of BVS-1. The tail was three hundred feet farther out. Left to themselves, they'd have gone in completely different orbits. My head and feet tried to do the same thing when I got close enough.»
«I see. Are you molting?»
«What?»
«I notice you are losing your outer integument in spots.»
«Oh, that. I got a bad sunburn from exposure to starlight. It's not important.»
Two heads stared at each other for an eyeblink. A shrug? The puppeteer said, «We have deposited the residue of your pay with the Bank of We Made It. One Sigmund Ausfaller, human, has frozen the account until your taxes are computed.»
«Figures.»
«If you will talk to reporters now, explaining what happened to the Institute ship, we will pay you ten thousand stars. We will pay cash so that you may use it immediately. It is urgent. There have been rumors.»
«Bring 'em in.» As an afterthought I added, «I can also tell them that your world is moonless. That should be good for a footnote somewhere.»
«I do not understand.» But two long necks had drawn back, and the puppeteer was watching me like a pair of pythons.
«You'd know what a tide was if you had a moon. You couldn't avoid it.»
«Would you be interested in —»
«A million stars? I'd be fascinated. I'll even sign a contract if it states what we're hiding. How do you like being blackmailed for a change?»
GHOST: TWO
I tried to script the story myself, of course. There was a computer program that would do it as an interview. I made lots of notes … too many notes, because any time I tried to write text for myself, I blocked.
So I advertised for a ghost.
Ander Smittarasheed answered.
His type was familiar enough. He was a gaudy flatlander athlete, too aware of the limps and lames around him, very aware that any woman was his for the asking. It all showed in his words and body language.
Maybe I wouldn't even have hired him, but he just pushed into the situation without giving me a chance to react. Before my caution caught up, I was telling him everything … nearly everything. He turned it into a one-act play between me and the interview program, all in one afternoon. We spent two days polishing before we filmed it. The recording sold instantly to the nets.
He could write. That in itself was amazing.
I said, «I couldn't tell you about the blackmail aspect.» We weren't shouting now. The undersea dome isn't really glass; it's something that absorbs shock waves, including sound, not to mention tsunamis.
Ander Smittarasheed grinned at me patronizingly. «Did you think you were putting something over on General Products!»
«At the time. I still don't know for sure. Maybe I was crazy to think that a spacegoing species wouldn't understand tides.»
«Maybe. But why would they send a human pilot to learn what they already knew?»
«Mmm … Ander, look at it this way. A university team sets out to investigate a cold neutron star. They make a mistake, probably without informing General Products, but they're using a GP hull. The ship comes back with the pilots dead in vividly gory fashion. General Products works out how it happened, but they'd rather not be seen as making excuses. Why not let someone of the same species solve the problem and then talk for them?»
«They seem to have had a good deal of faith in you.»
I laughed as if I hadn't a care in the world. «Oh, Ander. I wonder how many times they tried it.»
He thought it over. «No. They showed Sigmund your contract. They would have had to do that several times.»
«Yeah.»
«Beowulf, Sigmund would not have participated while they killed one pilot after another.»
I said, «Mad Bomber Sigmund? Ander, I never had any intention of stealing that ship.» I saw his look, but I went on. «Now, that could imply that Sigmund is a bad judge of character. Or it could mean that he braced … oh, a dozen pilots, each in turn. The odds of one of us stealing a ship get pretty good. Remember, if each of us does our job, the hull comes back at the end of the orbit. Those things cost.»
Ander's jaw set. He said, «No.»
All right, no. I'd try again later. Beowulf Shaeffer is a misunderstood innocent. Sigmund Ausfaller isn't quite trustworthy. Change the subject — «Or do you mean they trusted me to write my own script? I tried that, Ander.»
«You really needed help. 'First neutron star ever discovered,» he quoted.
First old, cold neutron star. Good thing he'd spotted that embarrassment. I said, «You couldn't dive that close to a pulsar. Even a GP hull couldn't bash through the accretion disk. I've gotten better at explaining things, Ander.»
I was scampering about inside my head, seeking any hole that might offer an escape.
Monitoring a citizen can be easy, or cheap, or foolproof; take your choice. Ausfaller was backing Ander with UN money. The United Nations didn't have authority outside Sol system, but Ander could be using ARM funds or equipment.