Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact & Fiction October 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. SATELLITE SYSTEM By H. B. FYFE _Fyfe's quite right . .. There's nothing like a satellite system for a cold storage arrangement. Keeps things handy, but out of the way. .. . _ Illustrated by Summers * * * * * Having released the netting of his bunk, George Tremont floatedhimself out. He ran his tongue around his mouth and grimaced. "Wonder how long I slept . .. Feels like too long, " he muttered. "Well, they would have called me. " The "cabin" was a ninety-degree wedge of a cylinder hardly eight feethigh. From one end of its outer arc across to the other was just overten feet, so that it had been necessary to bevel two corners of thehinged, three-by-seven bunk to clear the sides of the wedge. Lockersflattened the arc behind the bunk. Tremont maneuvered himself into a vertical position in the eighteeninches between the bunk and a flat surface that cut off the point ofthe wedge. He stretched out an arm to remove towel and razor from oneof the lockers, then carefully folded the bunk upward and hooked itsecurely in place. With room to turn now, he swung around and slid open a double door inthe flat surface, revealing a shaft three feet square whose center wasalso the theoretical intersection of his cabin walls. Tremont pulledhimself into the shaft. From "up" forward, light leaked through apartly open hatch, and he could hear a murmur of voices as hejackknifed in the opposite direction. "At least two of them are up there, " he grunted. He wondered which of the other three cabins was occupied, meanwhilepulling himself along by the ladder rungs welded to one corner of theshaft. He reached a slightly wider section aft, which boastedentrances to two air locks, a spacesuit locker, a galley, and a head. He entered the last, noting the murmur of air-conditioning machineryon the other side of the bulkhead. Tremont hooked a foot under a toehold to maintain his position facinga mirror. He plugged in his razor, turned on the exhauster in the slotbelow the mirror to keep the clippings out of his eyes, and began toshave. As the beard disappeared, he considered the deals he had cometo Centauri to put through. "A funny business!" he told his image. "Dealing in ideas! Can youreally sell a man's thoughts?" Beginning to work around his chin, he decided that it actually waspractical. Ideas, in fact, were almost the only kind of import worthbringing from Sol to Alpha Centauri. Large-scale shipments ofnecessities were handled by the Federated Governments. To carry evenprecious or power metals to Earth or to return with any type ofmanufactured luxury was simply too expensive in money, fuel, effort, and time. On the other hand, traveling back every five years to buy up plans andlicenses for the latest inventions or processes--_that_ was profitableenough to provide a good living for many a man in Tremont's business. All he needed were a number of reliable contacts and a good knowledgeof the needs of the three planets and four satellites colonized inthe Centaurian system. Only three days earlier, Tremont had returned from his most recenttrip to the old star, landing from the great interstellar ship on theouter moon of Centauri VII. There he leased this small rocket--the_Annabel_, registered more officially as the AC7-4-525--for his localtraveling. It would be another five days before he reached theinhabited moons of Centauri VI. He stopped next in the galley for a quick breakfast out of tubes, regretting the greater convenience of the starship, then returned thetowel and razor to his cabin. He decided that his slightly rumpledshirt and slacks of utilitarian gray would do for another day. Aboutthirty-eight, an inch or two less than six feet and muscularly slim, Tremont had an air of habitual neatness. His dark hair, thinning atthe temples, was clipped short and brushed straight back. There weresmile wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes and grooving his leancheeks. He closed the cabin doors and pulled himself forward to enter thecontrol room through the partly open hatch. The forward bulkheadoffered no more head room than did his own cabin, but there seemed tobe more breathing space because this chamber was not quartered. Deckspace, however, was at such a premium because of the controls, acceleration couches, and astrogating equipment that the hatch was thelargest clear area. Two men and a girl turned startled eyes upon Tremont as he rose intotheir view. One of the men, about forty-five but sporting a youngishmanner to match his blond crewcut and tanned features, glanced quicklyat his wrist watch. "Am I too early?" demanded Tremont with sudden coldness. "What are youdoing with my case there?" The girl, in her early twenties and carefully pretty with her longblack hair neatly netted for space, snatched back a small hand fromthe steel strongbox that was shaped to fit into an attaché case. Thesecond man, under thirty but thick-waisted in a gray tee-shirt, saidin the next breath, "Take him!" Too late, Tremont saw that the speaker had already braced a footagainst the far bulkhead. Then the broad face with its crooked blob ofa nose above a ridiculous little mustache shot across the chamber athim. Desperately, Tremont groped for a hold that would help him eitherto avoid the charge or to pull himself back into the shaft, but he wascaught half in and half out. He met the rush with a fist, but the tangle of bodies immediatelybecame confusing beyond belief as the other pair joined in. Something cracked across the back of his head, much too hard to havebeen accidental. When Tremont began to function again, it took him only a few secondsto realize that life had been going on without him for some littletime. For one thing, the heavy man's nosebleed had stopped, and he wastenderly combing blood from his mustache with a fingertip. For another, they had managed to stuff Tremont into a spacesuit andhaul him down the shaft to the air lock. Someone had noosed the thumbsof the gauntlets together and tied the cord to the harness supportingthe air tanks. Tremont twisted his head around to eye the three of them withoutspeaking. He was trying to decide where he had made his mistake. Bill Braigh, the elderly youth with the crewcut? Ralph Peters, thepilot who had come with the ship? Dorothy Stauber, the trim brunettewho had made the trip from Earth on the same starship as Tremont? Hecould not make up his mind without more to go on. Then he remembered with a sinking sensation that _all_ of them hadbeen clustered about his case of papers and microfilms when he hadinterrupted them. "I trust you aren't thinking of making us any trouble, Tremont, "drawled Braigh. "Give up the idea; you've been no trouble at all. " "Where do you think this is getting you?" demanded Tremont. Braigh chuckled. "Wherever it would have gotten you, " he said. "Only at less expense. " "Ask him for the combination, " growled Peters. Braigh scrutinized Tremont's expression. "It would probably take us a while, Ralph, " he decided regretfully. "It's simpler to put him outside now and be free to use tools on thebox. " Tremont opened his mouth to protest, but Braigh clapped the helmetover his head and screwed it fast. "You'll never read the code!" yelled Tremont, struggling to breakfree. "Those papers are no good to you without me!" Someone slammed him against the bulkhead and held him there with hisface to it. He could do nothing with his hands, joined as they were, and very little with his feet. It dawned upon him that they could nothear a word, and he fell silent. Twisting his head to peer out theside curve of his vision band, he caught a glimpse of Peters suitingup. A few minutes later, they opened the inner hatch of the air lock andshoved Tremont inside. Peters followed, gripping him firmly about theknees from behind. "Here we go!" grunted Peters, and Tremont realized that he couldcommunicate again, over their suit radios. "You won't get far, trying to read the code I have those paperswritten in, " he warned. "You'd better talk this over before you make amistake. " "Ain't no mistake about it, " said Peters, pressing toward the outerhatch. "So you chartered the rocket. You felt you oughta go out to seeabout a heavy dust particle hitting the hull. You fell off an' wenever found you. " "How will you explain not going yourself? Or not finding me byinstruments?" Peters clubbed Tremont's foot from the tank rack he had hooked withthe toe. "How could I go? Leave the ship without a pilot? An' the screens arefor pickin' up meteorites far enough out to mean somethin' at thespeeds they travel. So you were too close to register, leastways tillit was way too late. You must have suffocated when your air ran out. " Tremont scrabbled about with his feet for some kind of hold. The outerhatch began to open. He could see stars out there. "Wait!" shouted Tremont. It was too late. He felt himself shoot forward as if Peters had thrusta foot into the small of his back and shoved. Tremont tried to grab atthe edge of the air lock, but it was gone. A puff of air frosted abouthim, its human bullet. * * * * * The stars spun slowly before his eyes. After a moment, the gleaminghull of the _Annabel_ swam into his field of view. It was alreadythirty feet away and the air lock was closing. He caught a glimpse ofa spacesuited figure with the light behind it. Then he was looking at the stars again. The small, distant brilliance of Alpha Centauri made him squint in thesplit second before the suit's photoelectric cells caused filters toflip down before his eyes. Then it was stars again, and the filtersretracted. "They can't do this!" said Tremont. "_Peters!_ Do you hear me? Youcan't get away with this!" There was no answer. The rocket came into view again, farther away. He had to get backsomehow. Forgetting the bound position of his hands, he attempted tocheck his belt equipment. Holding his arms as far as possible from hisbody was not enough to let him get a look at the harness from withinhis helmet. He tugged violently at the cord holding the thumbs of his gauntlets, and thought it gave slightly. _Maybe it just tightened_, he thought. To free his hands, he drew his arms in through the wide armpits of thesuit sleeves, built that way to enable the wearer to feed himself, wipe his brow, or adjust clothing or heating units within the suit. Hefelt more comfortable but that got him nowhere except for the chanceto consult his wrist watch. Set at the lunar time of Centauri VII-4, it told him that when he hadgone out of the airlock five minutes before the time had been 17:36. It did not strike Tremont as being a very promising bit ofdata--warning him merely that when he began to feel the want of air, it would be about 21:30. He longed for a pen-knife. "_There's_ one thing I'm going to ask about on my next trip to Sol--ifI make one!" he muttered. "Has anyone developed a reliable, small_suit_ air lock, so you can pass things out from your pockets?" He thrust his hands once more into the arms of the suit, and felt asfar along his belt as he could. He did manage to reach the usualposition of the standard rocket pistol. The hook was empty. "Well, that's that!" he groaned. "They didn't forget. I have nothingto maneuver with. " He pondered worriedly. Perhaps the air--if he dared to waste any, itwould make a small jet. Slow, but he had all the rest of his life! He settled down to picking at the cord about his thumbs with the tipsof the other fingers in his gauntlets. It seemed possible that hemight in time chew it up to the point where it could be snapped. The stars streamed slowly past his line of vision as he spun throughthe emptiness. Two or three little bits of the cord chipped off anddrifted away. Tremont realized that it was frozen and brittle. Heredoubled his efforts. After a few minutes of clumsy clicking offingertips against thumbs, he strained to pull his hands apart. The cord parted and his arms jerked out to their full spread with suchsuddenness that he felt his backbone creak. For a moment, he hungmotionless inside his suit, wondering if he had hurt himself. Recovering, he groped about, checking for his equipment. He discoveredthat nothing had been left. No knife, no rocket pistol, no line withmagnet for securing oneself to a hull. _Well, at least I can reach the valves of the air tanks_, he reassuredhimself. He watched for the ship, so as to judge his direction. Several minutespassed before he allowed himself to recognize the truth of hissituation: he could no longer see the gleam of Alpha Centauri on thehull! He was already too far out to dare to waste air. He might give awayhis last four hours of life just to send himself in the wrongdirection. "How did I get myself into this?" he groaned. * * * * * He set himself to thinking back to his meetings with the others. Dorothy Stauber had landed from the same starship after passage fromSol, but he had not become acquainted with her during the trip exceptto pass the time of day. He seemed to remember that she had turned upin the Customs dome to ask his advice on travel. .. . "Ye-ah!" he growled to himself. "_After_ I phoned to lease a rocket. She must have known, but how?" Someone in the shipping office? Well, why not Peters, the pilot? Andthen Braigh had come along, pretending to have been on his way back toCentauri VI and hoping to buy a fast passage on a small vessel forbusiness reasons. He had been free and ready with his money, leadingTremont to consider cutting his own expenses on the charter. It seemed, on the face of it, that the three of them had never metuntil the _Annabel_ lifted. "But they had, all right!" Tremont told himself. "That was no chance, anywhere along the line. I've been very neatly highjacked!" The girl must have trailed him to make sure they picked up the rightman. Braigh had never explained exactly what he was doing on thesatellite; he could have arranged for the assignment of the rocket, orperhaps of the pilot, when Tremont called. Then they had gatheredaround to hitch rides, and had been in control ever since. Tremont looked at the slowly progressing constellations and cursedhimself. He began to have the feeling that there would be no way outof this. They would regret pitching him into space in such an offhandmanner, he reminded himself, when they opened his case. It would betoo late as far as he was concerned. _Come to think of it_, he considered, _that Braigh looks pretty smart, under that idiot-kid pose. He might just break my code, given time. And the parts made up of model photos or drawings he can sell almostas is. _ When he came to think of it, Tremont was surprised that no one hadtried the same racket before. He had laid out a fortune for what thethree thieves were stealing from him. He drew in his left arm again and raised the wrist to the neck of hishelmet. By looking down his nose, he discovered to his surprise thathe had been out nearly an hour. He had wasted more time than hethought in reviewing his earlier encounters with Dorothy aboard thestarship and the others at the spaceport. He raised the water tube to his mouth and sucked in a mouthful. Thetaste was stale. _I could do with a beer, if this is the way I'm going out_, hethought. _They can joke all they want about dying in bed aftertraveling to the stars; but you could order a beer even if it killedyou. _ It gradually dawned upon him that the hazy light he had accepted asbeing a nebula must be something closer. He watched for it, anddiscovered after a few moments that it was growing brighter. Itcontinued to do so for half an hour. "It might be another ship!" he breathed, then he began to shout, "Mayday! Mayday!" over his radio. He kept it up for nearly a quarter of an hour, even after the outlinewas definitely recognizable as a rocket. He found himself driftingacross its course near the bow. It was hard to estimate the distance, but he guessed it to be something like a hundred yards. _Drifting?_ he asked himself. _It should be going past me like ashooting star! Unless they took exactly the same curve from CentauriVII--_ Then he could read the numbers he feared to see. AC7-4-525. His ownship. He had gone out of the air lock mainly on a puff of air, with somefumbling help from Peters. That had been enough to send him out ofsight of the ship--in space, not necessarily very far--and now he wasback, after two hours. _A long, flat orbit in relation to the ship_, he told himself, remembering in time to avoid speaking aloud that Braigh might be atthe ship's radio, _but actually weaving back and forth across therocket's course, just nipping it at this end_. He edged a hand inside the suit again and turned off his radio. If hefound an answer, it would be fatal to be overheard mumbling about it. * * * * * The ship now seemed to be rushing at him, and Tremont deduced that hisorbital speed had increased as he approached the focus represented bythe _Annabel_. He would doubtless pass near the air lock at about hisexpulsion speed. "Here's the chance!" he exulted. "A little air let out to slow down . .. Oreven just to veer close enough to lay hands on something! You launched me, Peters, but you didn't lose me. " Getting through the airlock should be easy enough. He might be well upthe shaft before the others emerged from the control room. In fact, unless Peters were on watch, the air lock operating signal might flashunnoticed on the board. "And I'll be cracking skulls before they know what's up!" he growled. It struck him with a flash of ironic amusement that he had not felthalf so much hate when believing himself doomed. After two hours ofsweating out his helplessness, he had discovered a lively resentmentof the vicious callousness with which he had been jettisoned. He was only about twenty-five yards away now, seemingly circling theship. Peering closer, he saw that actually he was sweeping in towardit. _Now, be ready with the air tank valve, just in case!_ he warnedhimself. The great fins loomed to his right; the hull blotted most of the skyfrom his view. It looked as if he would curve down to a spot besidethe same air lock from which he had been expelled. It seemed to bestill open. Then he saw the shape of a helmet rise around the curve of the ship. Someone was out on the hull. Tremont switched on his radio and listened. The spacesuited figure climbed completely into view. There appeared tobe a line running from the belt into the air lock, and the figurecarried a long pole of some sort. "Oh, there you are, Tremont!" came Braigh's voice over the receiver. "I've been waiting for you. " The chuckle that followed made Tremont curse, which in turn provoked ahearty laugh from the other. "You didn't think I'd forget you?" asked Braigh. "We figured out whathappened as soon as we heard you putting out those distress calls. After that, it was just a matter of timing. Have you had an amusingtrip?" "Have you found out you can't make anything of those papers yet?"countered Tremont. "Oh, the coding? It might take a little time, but we have plenty . .. Now, now, Tremont! That kind of abusive language will get younowhere. " Tremont had drifted to a point above the other's head, almost withinreach. He was kicking out in little motions that betrayed hiseagerness to come to grips with Braigh or _something_ solid. "Why, Tremont! I do believe that you thought I came out to bargainwith you, " chuckled the blond man. "Not at all! I told you that you'dbe no trouble. I just came out to finish the job Peters bungled. " Tremont saw the pole jabbing upward at his stomach. Instinctively, hegrabbed at the end. Braigh was not disturbed. "Take it with you, then!" he laughed, letting go his end with apowerful push. "Let me know if you're alive the next time you comearound, so I can come out again. " Tremont began to swear at him, then got a grip on himself long enoughto snap his radio off. He had begun pulling himself down the pole when Braigh had shoved. That sapped some of the force, but it was still enough to send himspinning out into the void once more. The ship receded slowly. He saw Braigh return to the air lock andenter. A moment later, that light was cut off, and Tremont began toback off into space as he had the first time. _They know all about it_, he realized. _They could leave me any timejust by burning a little fuel. Peters wouldn't care about wastingit--I paid for it. Maybe he's just too lazy to calculate the coursecorrection. _ If so, he decided, the pilot was right. Tremont might drift back, buttwo more hours from now, when he would be at his closest, would be toolate. He would be too near the end of his air to use it to make sureof the last few feet. He looked at the pole in his grip. It was an eight-foot section ofaluminum from the cargo racks. "Maybe . .. " he muttered. Whirling the pole around by the end, he managed after considerabletrial and error, to slow his wild spin enough to keep the ship inview. The only question then was whether he dared to take the chance; and hereally had but one choice. The full orbit would be too long a period. He estimated as well as he could the direction of his progress, allowed a few degrees which he fondly hoped would curve him in to acloser approach at the meeting point, and hurled the pole into spacewith all his strength. After that, there was nothing to do but wait and hope that he had cuthis speed enough to bring him to the ship ahead of schedule by ashorter orbit. * * * * * Tremont finally gave up looking at his watch when he found himselfpeeping every three minutes, on the average. The immensity of spacewas by now instilling in him a psychological chill, and he drew botharms in from their sleeves to hug an illusion of warmth to him. Theair pressure in the sleeves gradually overpowered the springs of thejoints, and extended them to make a cross. As far as he could tell from the gauges lined in a miniature rowalong the neckpiece of the suit, his heating system was functioning asdesigned. The batteries had an excellent chance of lasting longer thanhe would. He began to dwell upon thoughts of squeezing Peters in the steel gripof his gauntlets until the pilot's fat face turned purple and his eyespopped. Another promising activity would be to bang Braigh's headagainst a bulkhead with one hand and Dorothy's with the other. _Wonder if they found the gun in my locker?_ he mused. Finally, only a lifetime or two after he hoped to see it, he sightedthe ship again. His watch claimed the trip had lasted less than ninetyminutes. He encountered unexpected trouble approaching the hull. Realizing thathe was lucky to come close at all by such a guess, he tried to steerhimself with brief jets from his air tank, and wound up on the vergeof bashing directly into a fin. He avoided that, but had to use moreair to spin back for a more gentle contact. The metal felt like solid Earth to him as he seized the edge of a finand planted the magnets of his boots firmly on the hull. It was perhaps twenty minutes later, when Tremont was beginning toworry again about his air supply, that the hatch of the air lock beganto open. Crystals of frost puffed out as the water vapor left the air. Braigh'shelmet appeared, then the whole spacesuited figure floated up beforethe spot where Tremont was watching. The highjacker dropped themagnet of his life line against the hull and started to turn around. Tremont grabbed the edge of the hatch with one hand, yanked the magnetloose with the other, and kicked Braigh in the right area. The spacesuited figure shot off, tumbling end over end, into the void. A startled squawk sounded over Tremont's receiver. "See how _you_ like it!" he snarled. He ignored the begging of the suddenly frightened voice, and divedinto the air lock. In seconds, he had the outer hatch shut and wasnervously watching the air pressure building up on the gauge. _If they notice at all, they'll think it's Braigh coming back!_ heexulted. He made it into the central shaft without meeting anyone. Pullinghimself forward in the bulky suit was an awkward task, but well worthit for the expression on Peters' face when Tremont burst through thecontrol-room hatch. After dealing with the pilot in about two minutes, most of it spent incatching him, Tremont went back along the shaft and found Dorothy inher bunk. Before she could release the netting, he folded the bunkupon her and secured it to the hook. Only then did he allow himselfthe time to remove his helmet and make free of the ship's air. "What are you going to do?" demanded the girl, rather shrilly. Tremont realized that she must have seen the unconscious Petersfloating outside in the shaft. "You won't like it!" he promised. "Tremont! I didn't know they'd do anything to you. Can't . .. You and I . .. Make some kind of . .. Deal?" Tremont stared at her levelly. "But I'd have to really sleep sometime, " he pointed out gently. "Howcan I trust you. .. ?" * * * * * He was hardly a million miles out from the satellite system ofCentauri VI when the Space Patrol ship he had called managed to put apilot aboard to land the _Annabel_ for him on the largest moon. Tremont returned wearily from helping the man in the air lock--whichhe did with a practiced efficiency that surprised the pilot--to resumehis talk with the patrol-ship captain waiting on the screen. "We could have done it sooner, you know, " said the latter curiously. "Well, now that I see him beside you, perhaps you'll explain yourrequest to delay, and also what those pips trailing you are. " "It's all the same story, " said Tremont, and explained hisdifficulties. The patrol captain frowned and expressed a wish to lay hands on thehighjackers. "Well, they're due back in"--Tremont consulted his watch--"about twohours. I wanted them near the ends of their orbits as you approached. " "You mean there are three bodies out there?" "Live ones, in spacesuits, " said Tremont. "Experience is a greatteacher. As soon as I sighted Braigh coming back, I set up a regularsystem. " He explained how he had removed all tools from the three spacesuits, added extra tanks, and stuffed the trio into them, either unconsciousor at gunpoint. "Then, having fastened the ankles together and wired the wrists to thethighs so they couldn't move at all, I launched them one at a timewith enough pressure in the air lock to give four-hour orbits. Thatgave me sleeping time. " "And what about them?" asked the captain. "Oh, at the end of that period, they'd come drifting in at one-hourintervals. Counting all the necessary operations, each of them gotthirty minutes actually out of the suit to eat and so on. Then outhe'd go while I fished in the next one. They didn't like it, but theyweren't so tough one at a time. " "Let's see--" mused the captain. "Every four hours, you'd have tospend . .. Why, only two hours processing them. As a result, you keptcomplete control and came shooting in here with your own satellitesystem revolving about you. " "And your friends? How have they been passing the time?" "Well, either figuring out how to take me next time, " guessed Tremont, "or wishing they were moving in more honest circles!" END * * * * *