Space Lawyer Read online

  The bartender looked at him curiously, whipped the drink into shape and set it before him. Kerry eyed the pale, watery liquid grimly, downed it neat. "Hurry that second one," he commanded.

  The nearer man leaned toward him. "That's powerful stuff to handle, son. You're liable to go out like a meteor." "What's the difference!" Kerry said bitterly.

  "Um-I see. Troubles, eh?"

  "Just that I lost my job. And there won't be any other." The man's eyes brightened. He scanned Kerry up and down with manifest approval.

  Kerry downed his second drink morosely. "Thanks for your interest," he said shortly. "But I didn't ask—"

  The man came confidentially closer. "Lost your job, eh? Too bad! You wouldn't by any chance be looking for another?"

  "There aren't any others," Kerry retorted gloomily.

  "Tsk! Tsk! How you go on! Here I'm making you a proper offer and you as much as tell me I'm lying."

  Kerry stiffened. The pullas were taking effect. They made him curiously springy and lightheaded. "What kind of job?"

  "A nice job; a lovely job. Join a spaceship and see the Solar System."

  "Oh!"

  "What's the matter with a space job?" the man demanded belligerently.

  "Nothing; except I'm—"

  "This here one I'm offering don't require no experience. Cargo handler. Just a couple o' hours work loading and unloading—the rest of the trip you're practically the ship's guest."

  "Well. I—"

  "Look, matey. The ship's due to blast off in an hour. She's all loaded and battened down. Jem here's top kicker of the handlers. One o' his men just busted a rib; that's why he needs another man pronto. What d'ya say?"

  Kerry considered. And the pulla considered with him. It was quite a comedown—from legal light to cargo wrestler. But what the hell! It was a job; and his funds were out.

  A flicker of wariness came to him. "What's the name of the ship?"

  The first man turned to the man he had called Jem. "I offer him a job an' he goes technical on me," he complained. He turned back to Kerry. "What's the dif, matey, if she's the Mary Ann or Flying Dutchman?"

  Kerry wobbled a little and considered that gravely. The more he thought of it, the more it sounded like brilliant sense. "Done!" he said suddenly.

  The man slapped him on the back. "That's the spirit. Bartender, three pullas and make one double-strength."

  Twenty minutes later Kerry's guides and mentors helped his weaving feet out toward the spaceport, shoved him halfway up the gangplank that led into the bowels of a space-scarred freighter. Its squat flanks were all battened down except for this single bow port, and the cradle on which it rested had swung slowly into the blasting-off position.

  Jem, the cargo boss, helped him along. "In you go, son. Gotta hurry now."

  Kerry blinked owlishly at the faded lettering along the bow. "Flying Meteor," he read. "A very good name," he approved with drunken gravity. "A most—"

  "Come along," Jem said impatiently.

  "Flying—Hey!" Kerry was cold sober now.

  "What's biting you?"

  "Flying Meteor. Holy cats! That's a Kenton freighter." "Sure it is. And why not? Kenton ships 're the best damn ships in space. Now will you come—"

  "Not me. I don't ship on a Kenton boat. Not if it's the last job on Earth. Here's where I get off."

  "Oh, you do, do you?" growled Jem. He shoved suddenly; and Kerry, off balance, went flying into the hold. The gangplank hauled away, the port slid shut; and the rockets went off with a roar and a splash. "You signed up for the voyage, son; and that's that."

  The Flying Meteor was bound for Ceres, largest of the asteroids, with a cargo of power drills, atom-explosives, detonators and miscellaneous mining equipment. Ceres was the port of entry for the entire asteroidal belt. Through its polyglot, roofed-in town of Planets streamed all the commerce of that newly exploited sector of space.

  For many years since the first exploratory flights no one had paid much attention to the swarms of jagged, rocky little planetoids that filled the gap between Mars and distant Jupiter. They held no air, no vegetation and their bleak stone surfaces looked uninviting to pioneers in a hurry to get out to the more hospitable ground of the Jovian satellites. The Martian Council took formal possession of the four largest—Ceres, Pallas, Vesta and Juno—more for astronomical outposts than for purposes of exploitation. The others were left contemptuously alone.

  That is, until a particularly inquisitive adventurer smashed head-on into an eccentrically rotating bit of flotsam not ten miles in diameter. If he hadn't been carrying a cargo of atomite at the time, it wouldn't have proved anything except that he was a bad navigator and that no funeral expenses were required.

  But when the space patrols reached the spot they found no hide or hair of adventurer or ship, and about a million meteoric fragments in place of the asteroid. And every fragment was a chunk of solid nickel steel, generously interspersed with glittering rainbow flashes of diamonds, emeralds and rubies.

  The nickel steel on assay proved immediately workable—a find of the greatest importance in view of the depleted mines of Earth. Mars, curiously enough, had plenty of copper, but no iron. As for the precious gems, they could be used in barter with the web-footed natives of Venus. Those childlike primitives took an immense delight in glittering baubles of that sort.

  Thereupon there was an immediate rush to the Belt from all over the System. It was the kind of rush that harked back to the first gold stampedes on Earth to California and the Klondike, and to the initial space-hurtling to the Moon when rocket flight became a reality. And, as in all rushes, the pioneers, insufficiently prepared against the rigors of space and the dangers of the Belt, starved and suffered and fought among themselves, and found death instead of riches.

  Not every rocky waste held within it the precious alloy. Not one in a hundred, in fact. And the lucky prospector, as often as not, had his claim jumped, his first load of metal—blasted out with infinite pains—high jacked, and his bloated body, stripped of space suit, tossed into the void.

  Even if he survived the initial dangers, he discovered that it took capital to work his find and transport the metal back to Mars and Earth. Lots of capital. And the men of wealth, like similar men of wealth throughout the ages, demanded so huge a slice of the take and their contracts were so cleverly complicated that the unfortunate prospector invariably rather bewilderedly retired with a condescending pat on the back to the joy palaces that had mushroomed on Planets, there to rid himself of a modest pension as fast as he could.

  Simeon Kenton hadn't come in with the first predatory rush of the men of wealth. He disapproved of their tactics and his disapproval, at first violent with expletives against such slimy snakes as Jericho Foote of Mammoth Exploitations, finally took the cannier form of preying on them.

  By means of superior resources and brainier lawyers he formed holding companies, took assignments of seemingly worthless rights from disgruntled miners and then fought the men of wealth through every court in the System until they were bankrupt or glad to sell out for a song. He merged and bludgeoned and purchased until more than a third of the wandering planetoids came under his control by outright ownership or option.

  Mammoth Exploitations, his closest competitor and special bete noire, held no more than a fifth. Scattered smaller companies and individuals accounted for another fifth; the remainder were still in the public domain, subject to proper filing claims.

  Kerry Dale soon found that life as a cargo wrestler was not all beer and skittles. Jem and his very suave companion—who proved to have been a space crimp and who discreetly disappeared to continue his trade after snaring Kerry—had been a trifle reckless with the truth. To call him practically the ship's guest during the trip itself required a peculiar idea of what constituted hospitality.

  No sooner had the ship blasted off than they set him to work. And what work! Scrubbing and scouring and restacking bales and cases every time the freighter took a steep curv
e— which was often—and the loose-packed cargo obeyed the law of inertia and tried to keep head-on in a straight line; running errands for the officers and opening tins of food for the cook; yes siring even the rocket monkeys and hunting for non-existent ether-wrenches while the dimwitted spacemen snickered and grinned all over their idiotic faces.

  Kerry had sobered fast enough. He demanded to see the captain at once. The captain was a man of few words. He cut short Kerry's flow of explanation. "Put this blasted swab into the brig," he roared, "without food or water until he's ready to work. And if be bothers me again, I'll make rocket fuel of him."

  "Yes, sir," said Jem discreetly and yanked the indignant new cargo handler out of the captain's way before he could say or do something really rash.

  "He can't talk to me that way," exclaimed Kerry. "I'm a lawyer and I'll see him and his blasted boss to—"

  "Look, son," said Jem, who wasn't a bad fellow at heart. "Don't get yourself into a lather. "If you're really a lawyer—" "Of course I am."

  "Then you ought to know something about space law. You signed articles back there in the saloon, and you're bound by them for the duration. A captain has power of life and death on a trip."

  Kerry paused. "Yes, I know. I must have been drunk when I signed."

  "You were," Jem told him feelingly. "The way you downed those pullas—"

  Kerry brightened. "O. K. I'll be a sport. I'll do the work. But as soon as the trip is over, I'll tell that roughneck captain a thing or two."

  "Better not," advised Jem. "You'll be under him for a whole year."

  "What?"

  "I told you, you were drunk. That contract was Standard Form No. 6. One year on the spaceways."

  Kerry's jaw went hard and his eyes blazed. "Old Fireball won't want me in his employ that long," he said grimly. "Not after what I had just got through telling him in his own office. Bring on your work, Jem."

  It was brought on in a way that surprised even that lithe, athletically fit young man. But he didn't complain, and by the end of the voyage he was on good terms with most of the crew and particularly friendly with Jem. But even as he wrestled cargo and wiped smudgy designs on his perspiring forehead with the back of his hand, Kerry's mind was racing with schemes and plans.

  The Flying Meteor had no sooner dropped into its landing cradle at Planets and discharged its cargo, and asteroidal leave been granted its crew for the space of a day, than Kerry Dale hustled over to the office of the Intersystem Communications Service.

  A most superior young lady looked at his still-smudged countenance with a lofty air. She patted the back of her hair-do with violet manicured hand and said yes? with that certain intonation.

  "Never mind the act," Kerry advised. "I want to send a spacegram to Simeon Kenton, of Kenton Space Enterprises, Megalon, Earth."

  The young lady was indignant. Imagine a low-bred cargo shifter talking to her like that! She tried to freeze him with a glance, but the smudged young man refused to freeze. Whereupon she stared pointedly at his grimy hands, his single-zippered rubberoid spacesuit.

  "The minimum for a spacegram to Earth is thirty Earth dollars," she said frigidly. "In advance."

  He grinned at her; and somehow his grin made her forget her superiority. "Don't let that get you down, sister," he smiled, leaning confidentially over the stellite desk. "This one's going collect."

  "Oh!" she gasped, and the melting thing she called a heart congealed again. "As if Mr. Kenton would honor your space-gram. As representative of the Intersystem Communications Service I must definitely refuse to—"

  He leaned closer to her. "Don't—" he whispered. "Don't what?"

  "Don't refuse. Read Section 734, Subdivision 2, Clause A of the Interplanetary Code. It says that should an officer or employee of any communications service engaged in the transmission, transference or forwarding of interspace messages refuse to accept any message properly offered for such transmission, transference or forwarding by any company, individual or individuals, the said officer or employee shall be liable to a fine of ten thousand Earth dollars or fifteen thousand Mars standard units, one half of which shall be paid over to the aggrieved party. How would you like to pay that fine?" he asked her.

  She was flabbergasted. A cargo wrestler, lowliest of spacemen, quoting law to her, with chapter and verse! Then she rallied the tattered remnants of her dignity. He must have read that in a communications office somewhere. By law that extract had to be posted prominently. She sniffed.

  "That's silly," she said. "A message to be properly offered must be paid for."

  "Of course! Kenton will pay for it."

  "He won't," she retorted. "And, anyway, how do I know?"

  "Section 258, Subdivision 6, Clause D, which says, in short, when a member of the crew of any spaceship is lawfully on voyage to any planet, satellite or asteroid, and an emergency arises, he may, at his employer's expense, send such space-grams, televised communications or other messages as may to him seem proper for the resolving of the emergency. I, my dear young lady, am a member of the crew of the Flying Meteor, just landed; said Flying Meteor belonging, as you ought to know, to old Simeon himself." Kerry fished out his identification tag, exhibited it. "Now do you, or don't you?"

  "I . . . I suppose so," she said weakly. She was getting a bit

  scared of this incredible space roustabout.

  "Good!" He flung her a slip of paper. "Send this off. When the answer comes, send it on to the Flying Meteor, Landing Cradle No. 8."

  By the time she started reading the message he was gone. As her eyes moved over the lines they became glassy, wild. She cried out: "You can't say anything like—" But she was talking to herself. The office was empty. In a panic she buzzed the visiscreen for her chief. He was out. All responsibility rested on her. Perhaps she should screen the main office on Mars. But that would take a few hours; and that terrible young man would quote another passage from the Code at her, relating to delays in transmission. Nervously she started the peculiar message on its way.

  CHAPTER 3

  SIMEON KENTON was engaged in another verbal bout with his daughter. It meant nothing. They both enjoyed it. Old Simeon fussed and fumed and Sally got her way. Which was as it should be.

  This time it was about her getting a little space knockabout with a cruising range to the Moon. "It's ridiculous!" he yelled. "And downright dangerous. Why can't you use my piloted machine?"

  "Because I don't like Ben Manners, that stodgy old pilot you insist on keeping. Manners, indeed! He hasn't the manners of an old goat."

  Simeon was shocked. "Such language, Sally! I'm surprised. Where do you learn such—"

  He saw her impish twinkle and stopped in time. "Anyway," he added hastily, "it's dangerous."

  "You know I've a Class A license, dad. If the Space-Inspection thinks I'm competent enough to go to Jupiter, I certainly don't see why—"

  The visiscreen buzzed. "Message for Mr. Simeon Kenton; message for Mr. Simeon Kenton."

  Simeon flung the switch into receptor range. "O. K. Go ahead."

  The Megalon operator of the Intersystem Communications Service appeared on the screen. He looked nervous. "It's from Planets, sir."

  "Ha! Must be the Flying Meteor. Shoot!"

  "It . . . it's collect, sir."

  "The devil! Since when does Captain Ball send collect? Don't he carry enough funds?"

  "Maybe there's trouble," Sally suggested.

  "The devil you say!" Simeon was startled. The Flying Meteor carried a valuable cargo. "Well, go on there, you!" he roared into the screen. "Don't be keeping me on tenterhooks.

  What's it say?"

  The operator was plainly ill at ease. He cleared his throat.

  "This . . . uh . . . message uh . . . our company takes no responsibility for—"

  "Who the blazes asks you to?" roared Simeon. "It's for me; not for you! Now, hurry up, or by the beard of the comet—" The operator began to read hastily.

  Simeon Kenton,

  Kenton Spa
ce Enterprises,

  Megalon, Earth.

  Dear Old Fireball:

  Ha Ha Ha. So you thought you fired me? Take another guess. Back in your employ in crew of Flying Meteor. Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here. And don't think you can fire me again. I have ironclad contract for one whole year. I can't stop laughing.

  Kerry Dale

  Sally began to snicker as the operator gulped on and on. Simeon's face turned a mottled red. His angelic whiskers and the thin white wisps on his head grew so electric she could almost see the sparks jumping from one to the other. "Stop!" he roared.

  The operator stopped.

  "Is he really back on your payroll, father?" Sally asked innocently.

  He glared at her. "Quiet! Of all the insufferable impudence, the ratgosted, blatherskited ripscullion!"

  "Father, your language! It's not even English!"

  The operator said timidly: "Any reply, Mr. Kenton?" Simeon whirled on the screen. "No!" he shouted. "I mean yes! Take this message. 'Kerry Dale, wherever the blazes you are, you're not—' "

  The operator paused in his writing. "Uh—is that the address?"

  "It ought to be. Bah! You know the blamed added address, don't you? Then put it in and stop interrupting me.

  Kerry Dale,

  Et Cetera, Et Cetera.

  You're fired and I mean fired. To blazes with your contract! I'll fight you all the way up to the Council and down again.

  KENTON

  "There, that will hold the young flipdoodle. Back in my employ, huh!"

  "I wonder," murmured Sally.

  "Wonder on."

  "I wonder if he doesn't want you to fire him. He looked like a pretty smart young man to me. In that case, knowing you as who doesn't—that would be just the kind of a spacegram to—"

  Simeon looked startled. "By gravy, Sally, maybe you're right!