A.D. 104-2128
Summer Wear
Cato Chapman and Celia Zorn, the model, were waiting for the Moon ship to take off from Mohave Spaceport. Chapman, a brisk young man who sometimes reminded people of a chipmunk, said to his young cousin, Mahoney: “If you can take enough time off from your precious paint, Ed, keep an eye on Miss Nettie. Don’t want to come back in twenty-two years and find she’s forgotten us.”
“Sure,” said Mahoney. “I like the old dame. She buys our paint. Tough customer, though, isn’t she?”
Celia Zorn said: “I think ‘formidable’ is the word. But see to it she doesn’t get some perfectly bizarre idea and go broke.”
“Like selling summer clothes to critters that don’t wear none and don’t need ’em?” said Mahoney. “If she gets any crazier ones than that . . .”
Chapman punched his cousin’s arm with friendly violence. “Not so nuts, Ed. Osirians go in for fads and fashions, and they’re the only civilized extra-terrestrials with a real capitalistic system; less socialized even than that of the U.S.”
Mahoney said: “What do I do if she does go loco?”
“I don’t know,” said Chapman, “but I’d hate to come back and find there wasn’t any Greenfarb’s of Hollywood . . .”
“All passengers! Todos passageiros!” bellowed the loudspeaker.
Chapman and Miss Zorn shook hands with Mahoney and walked up the ramp. Mahoney yelled after them: “Behave yourselves! Or if you can’t . . .”
Chapman thought that if he had misbehavior in mind, he wouldn’t pick a girl two inches taller than he. He forebore to say so, though, since he wanted to keep on friendly terms with Celia even if she did not appeal to the romantic side of his nature.
Seven hours later they alighted at Tycho station for the usual wrestle with red tape before boarding the Camões for Osiris, otherwise Procyon XIV. The passenger fiscal said: “You have a berth reserved for your trunk, senhor?”
“That’s right,” said Chapman.
“I do not understand. Contains this trunk a live creature?”
“Not at all. It is my sample trunk.”
“Samples of what?”
“Clothes. I am the sales agent for Greenfarb’s of Hollywood, summer wear, and Miss Greenfarb insists I sleep with that damned trunk until I’ve done my business.”
The fiscal shrugged. “It is no business of mine, if your employer wishes to pay a couple of thousand dollars extra. There is another passenger on the Camões with a sample trunk like yours; he is in clothing too. Excuse me please . . .”
Seeing that the next man in line was fidgeting, Chapman walked away, checking his tickets and passport.
“Yours okay?” he asked Celia.
“Yes. Wasn’t that ticket agent simply divine, Cato? I love these tall dark Latin types.”
“Keep your mind on business,” growled Chapman. As he was small and sandy, her remarks stung his amour-propre. Moreover he knew enough of her weaknesses to become apprehensive when she began to talk in that vein. He added: “Seems we’ve got a rival aboard.”
“What? How perfectly horrid! Who is he?”
“Dunno yet, but the fiscal said some guy has another sample trunk full of clothes.”
“Oh.” Celia’s face took on that lugubrious expression. “One of the big Parisian cout—”
“Sh! We’ll know soon enough. It’s not him, anyhow.” Chapman jerked his head towards an Osirian who stalked past on birdlike legs, carrying a suitcase. The Osirian (or Sha’akhfa, to give him his proper name) looked like a dinosaur seven feet tall: one of the little ones that ran around on their hind legs with a tail sticking out behind to balance. The creature’s scaly hide was decorated with an elaborate painted pattern in many colors.
“Excuse me, pleass,” said this being in a barely intelligible accent, “put what iss the correct moon time?”
Chapman told the Osirian (a male from his wattle) who set his wrist-watch and asked: “Are you too koink py the Camões?”
“Yes,” said Chapman.
“So am I. Let uss introtuce ourselfs. I am Businessman-second-rank Fiasakhe.”
Chapman introduced himself and the model and asked: “I wonder you don’t wait for an Osirian ship, Mr. Fiasakhe?”
“I would, sir, but an urchent message from home . . . I came in with that cultural mission, you know, that iss to prepare the way for the export of the designs of Osirian arts and crafts . . .”
Celia said: “I should think you’d find one of our ships frightfully uncomfortable.”
“I do! Always I am bumping my head on torframes or catching my tail in tors! Put then . . .” The creature managed a shrug with his negligible shoulders.
###
The steward showed Chapman his cabin and said: “Where shall we put this trunk you have a passenger ticket for, Senhor?”
“Middle bunk,” said Chapman, picking up the printed passenger list from the tiny dresser. He read:
Barros, M.C, Rio de Janeiro.
Bergerat, J.-J.M., Paris.
Chapman, C.H., Hollywood.
Chisholm, W.J., Minneapolis.
Fiasakhe, 3*, Cefef Aqh, Osiris.
Kamimura, A., Kobe.
Kichik*, Dzidzigä, Thoth.
Mpande, S., Molopololi, Bechuanaland.
Popovich, I.I., Sofia.
Savinkov, A.P., Paris.
Sz, T.-E., Tientsin.
Varga, M., Szolnok, Hungary.
Zorn, C.E., Hollywood.
A footnote told him that the names with asterisks were those of extra-terrestrials . . .
“Cato!” said Celia’s voice outside.
“Come in, Cee.”
The tall dark girl did so. “I’m in with Senhora Barros and Anya Savinkov. Anya is a model for Tomaselli’s of Paris!”
“Ah,” said Chapman. “Say who her boss was?”
“No, I’ve only just met her. She’s the redhead.”
“Hm. Our rival must be this Bergerat. I seem to remember that guy: the agent for Tomaselli’s at the New York fair three years ago. A tall dark type, the kind you slobber over—”
“I do not! The nerve of you—”
“Okay, consider it unsaid. A slick operator, as I remember; pulled some fast ones on the New York department stores.”
She looked at the list. “Fiasakhe we know. This Kichik must be an e.t. from Thoth. What are they like?”
“Monkey-rats, they sometimes call them; about a meter high, with seven fingers on each hand.”
“How perfectly horrid!”
“They’re harmless.”
The door opened again and the steward ushered in a black man who turned out to be S. Mpande. After introductions Chapman said: “How about giving me to top bunk, Mr. Mpande? I’m better fitted for climbing into it.”
Mpande patted his paunch and chuckled. “Right-o, old chap.”
“See you later, Cee,” said Chapman.
After the first few high-g hours following takeoff, Chapman got up from his bunk and went out to explore. On the opposite side of the narrow curving corridor, a little way around the circumference of the nose of the ship, was a door behind which, according to the legend in the Brazilo-Portuguese of the spaceways, lay the passengers’ heavy baggage. The door was closed by a simple cylinder lock—locked.
Following the corridor back in the other direction, Chapman came to the tiny saloon with its two little tables. Around one a game of sunburst was already under way among three human passengers and the Thothian, whose many fingers flipped the cards with ominous dexterity.
A tall dark young man unfolded himself and came over to extend a hand ornamented with a large and gaudy ring: “ ’Ello, Meester Shapman! Remembair me from the New York Fair?”
“Hello, Jean-Jacques,” said Chapman. “On your way to Osiris to drum up business?”
“Well, yes, maybe. I suspect that you and I, we are after the same thing.”
“Got a line of summer wear?”
“Pour le sport, that is it. This is droll, no? What is this about keeping your sample trunk in your cabin?”
Chapman grinned. “Thought some sharp operator like you might be along, so . . .”
“I see, ha-ha. Me, I think Captain Almeida’s locks will keep unwanted ones away. And I can imagine more amusing things to keep in my cabin than a trunk.”
“No doubt,” said Chapman. “But as there are only three females aboard . . .”
“Exactement. When the number does not come out even, the results are sometimes of the most amusing. Unless you count Kichik, who is neither one thing nor the other.”
“Both,” squeaked the Thothian. “Don’t you envy me? Three spades.”
It was hard to get Celia aside for private conversation because of the lack of space. He met the other passengers, including Bergerat’s luscious redhead, who seemed a nice straightforward girl. At least she didn’t tower over him as Celia did.
Since Mpande turned out to be a sunburst enthusiast, Chapman finally got a moment with his model in his cabin. He said: “I’m going to get a look at that trunk of Bergerat’s.”
“How, if it’s locked up?”
“Didn’t you know I once worked for a locksmith?”
“Now, look, Cato, don’t start something like that again. You remember what happened to you in the case of that Argentine polo player . . .”
“You leave this to me! I didn’t say I was going to do anything to his trunk, did I?”
“No, but I know you—”
“And I know Jean-Jacques; the only way to treat that no goodnik is to beat him to the punch.”
“I think he’s perfectly nice!”
“Ha ha. You’ll see.”
Chapman went back down the corridor and studied the baggage-room door. Then he took life easy until chance introduced him to Zuloaga, the chief engineer of the Camões.
“Could I have a look around?” he asked after the amenities.
“I much regret, but it is a strict rule of the Viagens Interplanetarias that no passengers are allowed in the power compartments.”
“Then how about the machine shop? I couldn’t do any harm there.”
Zuloaga wagged a forefinger. “Oh, you Americanos do Norte all want to get your hands greasy as soon as you come aboard. It must give you a feeling of virility, pois não? But come, you shall see our little shop.”
In the shop Chapman cultivated the acquaintance of Chief Machinist Gustafson. Zuloaga left them puttering among the tools. When Chapman departed a quarter-hour later, he took with him a lump of beeswax and a length of wire which he had slipped into his pockets unseen.
When he was sure nobody was coming along the corridor, Chapman made an impression of the cross-section of the slot of the lock on the baggage-room door, and poked his wire into the slot until he knew how deep it was.
As the hours passed, some passengers took short-trance pills while others continued to play sunburst. Fiasakhe, whose claws were ill-shaped for holding playing cards, sat folded in a corner of the saloon with his tail curled up against the wall, reading through a pile of slushy sentimental Earthly novels he had brought with him.
Chapman, after letting a decent interval elapse, found an excuse to get back into the machine shop. Here he wheedled a couple of pieces of titanium brass out of Gustafson and began hammering and filing them into the shape he wanted. Gustafson appeared to believe the unlikely story that they were for Chapman’s portable radio.
The two pieces of metal finally took the form of a couple of very slender cylinder-lock keys, one without any of the usual saw-toothed projections and the other with a single such projection. The two keys had handles offset in opposite directions. “For adjusting my germanium crystals,” said Chapman.
“You must show me how to fix mine some time,” said Gustafson.
“Sure. Obrigado.”
Chapman’s next step was to walk off from the dinner table with the pepper shaker in his pocket. When Mpande was absent from the cabin, Chapman emptied the pepper into an ordinary envelope and put the envelope in his pocket. Then he waited until nearly all the passengers were asleep, and Mpande was playing sunburst in the saloon. (On a spaceship there were always some individualists who preferred not to keep to the arbitrary waking-and-sleeping schedule of the majority.)
He slipped out of his cabin with the brass gadgets in his pockets and went to the baggage room. After looking nervously over his shoulders, he slipped the plain brass finger into the lock and twisted hard. Then he slid the one with the projection into the remaining space in the slot and worked it in and out until all the little split pins inside caught at their opening levels. Click! Chapman opened the door.
First, making sure that he would not be locking himself in, he closed the door behind him. He was in complete darkness except for the beam of his little pocket flashlight. The compartment was so jammed with baggage that there was little room to move. However, Chapman grinned when his light picked out Bergerat’s big sample trunk in plain sight, with the legend: J.-J. M. B.—Tomaselli of Paris. He had to move only one suitcase to get at it.
He grinned wickedly at the thought that Monsieur Tomaselli, a notorious pinchfranc, had been unwilling to lay out a couple of grand more to assure a private berth for his samples; how nice! But what now? The trunk had a combination lock: a Kleinwasser, the peculiarity of which was that it had to be locked as well as unlocked by twirling the knob in a certain combination. The idea had been to discourage people from locking the combination into the trunk.
That knowledge, however, did him no good without the combination. Of course there were the tried-and-true methods of prying, drilling, or blasting. But even the unbrilliant Gustafson would get suspicious if he tried to borrow a jimmy or a drill, and blasting was quite out of the question. What then? Too bad he didn’t have a hypnoscope to pry the combination out of Bergerat.
What other possibilities? The luscious redhead, Anya Savinkov, might prove pliable. In fact he wouldn’t mind cultivating her on general principles. Although he knew many beauties in Hollywood, they’d all be middle-aged matrons by the time he returned. That was why only people like Celia and himself, without close family ties, went off on jaunts of this sort. In the five months’ subjective time of their voyage, eleven years would be passing on the planets . . .
He whirled at a sound, snapping off his light. Somebody moved and breathed in the corridor outside. Then the door opened and an arm came through the opening to grope about the inside of the bulkhead for the light switch.
Chapman saw enough of a shoulder and part of a head, silhouetted against the lighted corridor, to recognize Jean-Jacques Bergerat. In another second the lights would go on, and the trunks were too closely packed for him to hide among them on such short notice.
With one hand Chapman reached into his blouse pocket and brought out a small fistful of pepper. With the other, having stowed his flashlight, he seized the wrist groping for the switch. He threw the pepper in Bergerat’s face and pulled hard on the wrist, jerking the man forward into the baggage room. Chapman let go his victim and slipped past him out the door, which he closed behind him just as the air was rent by the first of a series of crashing sneezes.
Half an hour later, a fist knocked on Chapman’s door. “Let me in, Cato! A thing of the most strange has ’appened to me!”
Chapman looked around the room and took the water carafe out of its bracket on the wall. In a pinch it would do.
Bergerat, however, seemed entirely friendly, though afflicted with a red face and bloodshot eyes. “My friend! It is something of incredible! I am walking along the corridor when I hear a noise coming from the baggage room. Aha, I say, what is it that is there? Is somebody after my beautiful samples? I push the door. Achoo! It opens, though it should at all times be locked except when the steward or one of the officers is there. I reach inside to put on the lights. What happens? I am seized and drawn in, and pepper is thrown in my face. The intruder, he rushes past me and out. Fortunately the door cannot be locked from the inside or I should be there yet. Achoo!”
“Who was it?” said Chapman.
“I don’t know, so quickly did the fripon move. For a moment I suspected even you. But that would be absurd; one agent of a great couturière to play such a trick on another? Then I thought maybe our friend Fiasakhe might have some fanatical idea that the custom of wearing clothes was indecent, and wished to prevent us from introducing it to his planet. But no, I am sure the hand that grasped my arm was that of a man, not an Osirian. Have you any ideas?”
Chapman asked innocently: “Is your model, Mademoiselle Savinkov, trustworthy?”
“That little one? I think that yes. Here, let us repair the ravages of time and misfortune.” Bergerat brought out a silver flask with two small cups screwed over the outlet. “Good cognac.”
Chapman sniffed suspiciously at his thimbleful of brandy and held it in his hand until Bergerat drank his. Then Chapman drank too.
“Let us go over the passenger list,” said Bergerat. “This Madame Barros, now, she is en route to join her husband, so I think she is kosher. Mr. William Chisholm: do you know anything of him?”
“Only what he’s told us. He’s some kind of professor . . .”
Chapman, sitting on the edge of Mpande’s bunk, swayed. Then, before he even realized what was happening, he lost consciousness.
###
Cato Chapman awakened with a headache and a foul taste in his mouth. He moved a little experimentally, groaned, and sat up to hold his head.
“I say, are you all right, old thing?” said Mpande, sticking his head out from the bottom bunk. “I came in some hours ago, and found you stretched out on your bunk with your togs on.”
“Guess I’ll live, thanks,” muttered Chapman. His watch told him it was nearly breakfast time.
He got up and shaved. Then, as soon as Mpande left, Chapman leaped to his trunk. Finding it still locked, he hoped for a moment it had not been tampered with. When he got it open, however, the gorgeous raiment within was a slimy mess. Some of the garments were full of holes; others were partly dissolved into a kind of slush; others were whole but violently discolored.
He pulled himself together and pressed the intercom button in the bulkhead. “Miss Zorn, please . . . Celia, this is Gato. Will you step over to my cabin, quick?”
When she saw the mess she clutched her head and moaned: “Cato! How perfectly ghastly! How did that happen?”
Chapman poked among the ruins and came up with a couple of slivers of thin glass. “See this cut on the outside?” He pointed to a semicircular gash that had been cut or burned in the metal of the trunk, and the resulting flap lifted up and pushed down again.
“It’s Bergerat, of course. I thought that ring of his looked too big to be just an ornament. It’s an energy cutter. He knocked me out with that drink—God knows how—cut the trunk open, and stuck in an acid bomb. They’re cute little things, used in strikes in the cleaning business. There’s a plastic covering about the size of an egg, and inside that a thin glass container with the acid and a sliding weight. You tap them hard on something and the weight breaks the glass and the acid dissolves the plastic.”
While they examined the ruined samples he told her of his earlier encounter with Bergerat in the baggage room.
She said: “He knew it was you, and decided to get even.”
“For what? I hadn’t hurt his damned trunk . . .”
“You mean not yet. You did fill his face with pepper, though. Why didn’t you have the sense to leave him be, instead of going in for this perfectly ridiculous amateur burglary?”
“What do you mean, ‘sense’? Damn it, woman, I’m in charge and I won’t be yelled at . . .”
“Who’s yelling at whom?”
“You are!” he shouted.
“I AM NOT YELLING!”
“YOU ARE TOO!” Chapman took a firm grip on himself and laughed. “So’m I. Let’s not fight; at least, not each other.”
“But what’ll we do? There’s nothing usable except this one pair of swim trunks, and we can’t give a showing with that.”
“We could give a sensational showing,” he said, “but the Osirians wouldn’t appreciate it.”
“There’s no way of turning back, say by being transferred to another ship, is there?”
“Certainly not. We’ve got enough energy stored in us, just from the speed we’re going, to—to—”
They both held their heads. Ceila Zorn finally said: “I knew nothing would come of letting you and Miss Nettie talk me into this crazy expedition. Even if we live to get back, the old hell-cat will fire us.”
Chapman looked up. “There’s one chance left.” He took out his wallet and stuffed it up his sleeve.
“Cato! Are you planning something reckless?”
“You’ll see. Anyway, what have we got to lose?”
In the saloon, the first shift had just finished breakfast and were making way for the second. Chapman pushed towards Bergerat, said: “All right, you . . .” adding several fruity epithets, and punched Bergerat’s nose.
Instantly, the saloon was filled with yells, silverware, and confusion. Bergerat got back one good right to Chapman’s mouth before they clinched and fell, threshing about in the little space between the two tables.
“Stop this at once!” shouted an authoritative voice in Brazilo-Portuguese, and Chapman felt himself plucked from his antagonist. Captain Almeida was roaring at him: “Are you mad, man? What is the meaning of this outrage?”
“This twerp,” said Chapman, blood trickling down his chin, “dopes me with a knock-out drop, picks my pocket, and puts an acid bomb in my sample trunk to ruin my stock, and you call it an outrage when I poke him one?”
“Liar!” said Bergerat. “I gave him a swallow of cognac and he passed out. Can I help it if he has no head for good liquor? I know nothing about his trunk and I never picked his pocket. Let me at the cheap chiseler . . .”
“Look in his pockets,” said Chapman.
Zuloaga ran his hands over Bergerat’s body and found Chapman’s wallet.
“You see?” said Chapman.
“But—but I have no idea how that got there,” said Bergerat. “He must have planted it while we were fighting . . .”
By now, however, Chapman had obviously captured the sympathy of the officers. “Let me show you my trunk,” he said.
He showed them the remains of the samples, Bergerat denying his guilt all the while. Chapman thought with an inward chuckle that he could never have proved that Bergerat had done the crime he had committed if he hadn’t first convinced the authorities that Bergerat had done another one he hadn’t.
Bergerat said: “I came to see Mr. Chapman because I had just had another encounter with him in the baggage room.” He went on with an account of his peppery experience.
“He’s making that up,” said Chapman. “He has to have something to say, I suppose. Let’s look at that trunk of his; maybe it’s full of stolen goods.”
They went down the hall, where the captain opened the baggage-room door. Chapman had a moment of panic lest somebody think to ask Gustafson what Mr. Chapman had been doing all that time in the machine shop. But nobody did, and Bergerat’s trunk proved undisturbed.
“Open it,” said the captain.
Bergerat complied. Inside was a mass of neatly hung summer wear, mostly female: sunsuits, bathing-suits, tennis clothes, and the like. None of the other passengers claimed any of these items as stolen property.
“You see,” said Chapman. “Nobody’s tried to break into his trunk.”
“I see,” said Captain Almeida. He slammed the trunk closed, spun the knob, and turned on Bergerat. “You, amigo, are under arrest for assault, burglary, theft, and any others I think up later. You will remain in Compartment K until we arrive, when formal charges will be preferred. Take him away.”
Anya Savinkov protested: “But—but that is wrong—you should at least put them both in the cell. What will become of me? I am desolated—”
Chapman patted her arm. “That’s all right, little one. I’ll take care of you.”
“Huh?” said Celia Zorn. “Watch out for him, Anya, when he starts talking that way . . .”
Chapman laughed at them and went back to his cabin, where he swabbed out the inside of his trunk. At the next sleeping period, he made sure Mpande was engrossed in a game in the saloon, dug his lock pickers out of their hiding place, and entered the baggage-compartment again. Captain Almeida, not knowing the peculiarity of the Kleinwasser lock, had simply given the knob a twirl, so that Bergerat’s trunk was not really locked at all.
Half an hour later, all Miss Greenfarb’s ruined summer wear had been transferred to Bergerat’s trunk, while Monsieur Tomaselli’s assortment of similar garments reposed snugly in Chapman’s trunk in Chapman’s cabin.
Then he relaxed in the saloon by dragging Fiasakhe away from his sentimental novels for a bout of checkers.
###
After the Camões had landed and all the passengers had been through passport, health, and customs inspection, Chapman said: “Come along, girls. I think those birds in the waiting room are our Osirian capitalists.”
“What good will it do?” wailed Celia. “We haven’t got any stock and we can’t make any . . .”
“Leave it to me,” said Chapman. “Oh, Fiasakhe!”
“Yess?”
“Will you act as interpreter for me for a few minutes? I don’t know much of your language yet.”
“Klatly.”
They went up to the little herd of dinosaurs and Chapman told Fiasakhe: “Ask them if one of them is Thafahiya the curtain-maker.”
After some hissing in the Sha’akhfi tongue, Fiasakhe reported: “That bik one is he.” He indicated a tall Osirian whose scales were decorated with a peculiarly gorgeous pattern of blue-and-gold paint. “Say he get Miss Greenfarb’s letter. Think it is a fine idea. You sell them the designs, they make the clothes. Naturally their answer will not haff reached Earth for many yearss yet. Will you come with them to their office to arranche the showink?”
“Come, girls,” said Chapman, starting to follow his new associates. Through the glass doors he could see an Osirian automobile—a wheeled platform with handrails but no seats. With those tails a sedan body wouldn’t be practical . . .
“Senhor Chapman!” It was one of the Viagens officials. “Just a minute, por favor!”
“What is it?” said Chapman in some annoyance.
“You must sign the complaint against the Senhor Bergerat. Otherwise we cannot try him.”
“Don’t want to press that complaint,” said Chapman, feeling magnanimous. “Four months in Compartment K was enough punishment.”
“But then we must let him go!”
“Okay, let him go.”
###
The assembled Osirians hissed like a leaky boiler as Celia and Anya paraded in front of them in one outfit after another. Chapman, whose command of Sha’akhfi was yet meager, read his patter from a script in phonetic symbols: “. . . here, ladies and gentlemen, is an outfit for window shopping on the boulevard. Notice the flare of the skirt . . .” He knew his accent was terrible, since some Sha’akhfi sounds simply could not be made by human vocal organs and vice versa. Naturally he did not tell them they were looking at the line of Tomaselli of Paris.
The female Osirians, he was gratified to see, were putting pressure on their males to buy them everything in sight. When it was over, the males lined up and signed checks, using their claws as pens, as fast as Chapman could quote them prices. Although these prices were fantastically high they did not, of course, cover the cost of bringing the sample trunk to Osiris, but there was no point either in giving the things away or in blowing a few grand more hauling them back to Earth.
After all the samples had been sold, the female Osirians wanted to buy the girls’ personal clothes—all of them. It took all Chapman’s persuasion to get rid of them.
“Whew!” he said as the last Osirian belle stalked out, a beret perched on her cockscomb and a halter around her breastless torso. “That—uh—that show you, eh, Thafahiya?”
“Magnificent!” said the Osirian. “We shall sign the contract forthwith. What a pity that with our bodily temperature control, we have never felt the need of this charming custom of wearing clothes? Come, I shall give you your contract and your first payment. When may we expect our first portfolio of designs?”
“They—they on way,” said Chapman in his stumbling Sha’akhfi. “Are being sent here by ship, for deposit with Viagens, and released to you if contract has been closed. Let us hurry, for we not want to miss Camões’ return trip.”
“No great matter; one of our own ships leaves for your star a few days later . . .”
Chapman hurried nevertheless. Osirians slept on the floor, did not use chairs, and subsisted on the meat of other reptiles which they domesticated. While he’d heard their spaceships made special provisions for human passengers, as those of the Viagens did for e.t.s, he did not care to test their sleeping accommodations and cuisine himself.
###
When he had stowed his copy of the contract between Greenfarb’s and Thafahiya’s syndicate safely in Captain Almeida’s safe, Cato Chapman said: “Well, girls, guess our fortunes are made.” Then he yelped as he saw Bergerat’s name on the passenger list.
“Well,” said Celia, “what did you expect the poor man to do?”
Chapman said: “This may be embarrassing.”
It did not, however, prove so. Bergerat grinned at him and said: “Where can we talk, my old? I have a proposition to make.”
Later he said: “Look, I cannot go back to Tomaselli. He will not only fire me but will try to get me blacklisted in Paris. A very vengeful man, my little Tomaselli.
“Now you and I, we have fought with what you call the bare knuckles—or is it brass knuckles?—and you have won. Bien. I congratulate you. But why can I not go back to Hollywood with you? It is the world’s other great style center. Perhaps you could put in a good word for me with your Miss Greenfarb.”
“Hm,” said Chapman. “An idea. Can’t promise anything. Nettie’ll probably think Tomaselli is trying to plant you in her shop as a spy. Are you sure he isn’t?” Chapman looked hard at his friendly enemy.
“No, no! That is easily proved. True, there is another motive in the case.”
“Huh?”
“A sentimental motive. Your Miss Zorn—ahum—ah . . .”
“Oh. Well, I’ll do what I can. By the way, how’d you work that Mickey Finn trick on me? I carefully watched you drink the same stuff.”
“That was simple,” said Bergerat. “I used a barbiturate that is counteracted by caffeine, and I filled myself with coffee before I visited your cabin. But we are all done with these games now, no?”
###
Five months later, subjective time, the shuttle rocket from Pluto landed at Mohave Spaceport. Chapman, with Anya clinging to his arm, walked down the ramp. There would be changes in twenty-two years. Fortunately, because of the great lengthening of the human lifespan in the last century, most of his old acquaintances would still be around. Including Miss Nettie.
He puffed furiously on his pipe, the first smoke he’d been allowed since boarding the Camões. Behind him came Bergerat and Celia. As they passed through the inspection rooms and into the waiting room, Chapman stopped short. His pipe bounced from the floor unheeded.
Except for those who had come in on the ship, the people swarming in the waiting room were all quite naked except for sandals. Moreover, their hides were decorated with the fantastically interwoven designs in iridescent colors that the Osirians used for personal adornment.
As the four stood gawking, a man came up. “Cato Chapman?”
“Y-yes. Who are you?”
“Don’t you know me?”
“By all the gods, you’re my cousin Ed Mahoney! This is my wife Anya, and these are Mr. and Mrs. Bergerat. Remember Celia? She always wanted a tall dark type. The captain hitched us on the way back from Osiris.”
Mahoney nodded. “I thought something like that might happen.”
“But—but—where the hell are your clothes? And why is everybody going around looking like the tattooed woman in the circus?”
“Oh, that. That’s the new Osirian style; it came in a couple of years ago. We don’t wear clothes in hot weather anymore.”
“Yuk,” said Chapman. “How come?”
“It seems some smart Osirians who came here on that so-called cultural mission started a syndicate to exploit the Osirian body-paint designs on Earth. That reminds me, you haven’t got a job anymore.”
“What?”
“That’s right. Nettie Greenfarb and all the other summer wear specialty shops went broke. Last I heard of Nettie she had some government job. But maybe you’d like to try the paint business. It’s doing swell, as you can imagine, and maybe I can find openings for you and your friend. Like me to fly you in to L.A.?”
Dumbly, they followed him.