Short Fiction by Mack Reynolds (ready to read books .TXT) 📕

Don nodded seriously. “Yes, sir. And what you just said is true. I couldn’t be used any longer in a Scout. I’d wind up selling bonds and giving talks to old ladies’ clubs.”

“Well, hardly that, Captain.”

“No, sir, I think I’d really be of more use out of the services. I’m tendering my resignation and making arrangements to help in the developing of Callisto and the other Jupiter satellites.”

The Commodore said nothing. His lips seemed whiter than before.

Don Mathers said doggedly, “Perhaps my prestige will help bring volunteers to work the new mines out there. If they see me, well, sacrificing, putting up with the hardships⁠ ⁠…”

The Commodore said evenly, “Mr. Mathers, I doubt if you will ever have to put up with hardships again, no matter where you make your abode. However, good luck. You deserve it.”

Outside headquarters, Don Mathers summoned a cab and dialed his hotel. On the way over, he congratulated himself. It had gone easier than he had expected, really. Although, come to think of it, there wasn’t a damn thing that the brass could do.

He had to laugh to himself.

Imagine if he’d walked in on the Commodore a month ago and announced that he was going to drop out of the Space Service. He would have been dropped all right, all right. Right into the lap of a squadron of psycho experts.

At the hotel he shucked his uniform, an action which gave him considerable gratification, and dressed in one of the score of civilian costumes that filled his closets to overflowing. He took pleasure in estimating what this clothing would have cost in terms of months of Space Service pay for a Sublieutenant or even a Captain. Years, my boy, years.

He looked at himself in the dressing-room mirror with satisfaction, then turned to the auto-bar and dialed himself a stone-age-old Metaxa. He’d lost his taste for the plebian tequila in the last few days.

He held the old Greek brandy to the light and wondered pleasurably what the stuff cost, per pony glass. Happily, he’d never have to find out.

He tossed the drink down and whistling, took his private elevator to the garages in the second level of the hotel’s basement floors. He selected a limousine and dialed the Interplanetary Lines building.

He left the car at the curb before the main entrance, ignoring all traffic regulations and entered the building, still whistling softly and happily to himself. He grinned when a small crowd gathered outside and smiled and clapped their hands. He grinned and waved to them.

A receptionist hurried to him and he told her he wanted to see either Mr. Demming or Mr. Rostoff, and then when she offered to escort him personally he noticed her pixie-like cuteness and said, “What’re you doing tonight, Miss?”

Her face went pale. “Oh, anything, sir,” she said weakly.

He grinned at her. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that if I’m not too busy.”

He had never seen anyone so taken aback. She said, all flustered, “I’m Toni. Toni Fitzgerald. You can just call this building and ask for me. Any time.”

“Maybe I’ll do that,” he smiled. “But now, let’s see Old Man Demming.”

That took her back too. Aside from being asked for a date⁠—if asked could be the term⁠—by the system’s greatest celebrity, she was hearing for the first time the interplanetary tycoon being called Old Man Demming.

She said, “Oh, right this way, Captain Mathers.”

Don said, “Mr. Mathers now, I’m afraid. I have new duties.”

She looked up into his face. “You’ll always be Captain Mathers to me, sir.” She added, softly and irrelevantly, “My two brothers were lost on the Minerva in that action last year off Pluto.” She took a deep breath, which only stressed her figure. “I’ve applied six times for Space Service, but they won’t take me.”

They were in an elevator now. Don said, “That’s too bad, Toni. However, the Space Service isn’t as romantic as you might think.”

“Yes, sir,” Toni Fitzgerald said, her soul in her eyes. “You ought to know, sir.”

Don was somehow irritated. He said nothing further until they reached the upper stories of the gigantic office building. He thanked her after she’d turned him over to another receptionist.

Don Mathers’ spirits had been restored by the time he was brought to the door of Max Rostoff’s office. His new guide evidently hadn’t even bothered to check on the man’s availability, before ushering Mathers into the other’s presence.

Max Rostoff looked up from his desk, wolfishly aggressive-looking as ever. “Why, Captain,” he said. “How fine to see you again. Come right in. Martha, that will be all.”

Martha gave the interplanetary hero one more long look and then turned and left.

As soon as the door closed behind her, Max Rostoff turned and snarled, “Where have you been, you rummy?”

He couldn’t have shocked Don Mathers more if he’d suddenly sprouted a unicorn’s horn.

“We’ve been looking for you for a week,” Rostoff snapped. “Out of one bar, into another, our men couldn’t catch up with you. Dammit, don’t you realize we’ve got to get going? We’ve got a dozen documents for you to sign. We’ve got to get this thing underway, before somebody else does.”

Don blurted, “You can’t talk to me that way.”

It was the other’s turn to stare. Max Rostoff said, low and dangerously, “No? Why can’t I?”

Don glared at him.

Max Rostoff said, low and dangerously, “Let’s get this straight, Mathers. To everybody else, but Demming and me, you might be the biggest hero in the Solar System. But you know what you are to us?”

Don felt his indignation seeping from him.

“To us,” Max Rostoff said flatly, “you’re just another demi-buttocked incompetent on the make.” He added definitely, “And make no mistake, Mathers, you’ll continue to have a good thing out of this only so long as we can use you.”

A voice from behind them said, “Let me add to that, period, end of paragraph.”

It was Lawrence Demming, who’d just entered from an inner office.

He said, even his voice seemed fat, “And now that’s settled, I’m going to call in some lawyers.