Cities in Flight

“You’re about as busy as a molecule at zero,” Amalfi roared, thrusting his head forward. The garageman’s shiny, bulbous nose retreated, but not by much. “We need repairs, and we mean to have ’em. We’ve got money to pay, and Lieutenant Lerner of your own local cops sent us here to get ’em. If those two reasons won’t suit you, I’ll have my sergeant put his gun hand to some use—he could probably draw and fire before you tripped over something in this junk yard.”

“Who the hell are you threatening? Don’t you know you’re in the Acolyte stars now? We’ve broken up better—no, now wait a minute, sergeant, let’s not be hasty. I’ve been dealing with bums until they’re coming out of my ears. Maybe you’re all right after all. You did say something about money—I heard you distinctly.”

“You did,” Amalfi said, remaining impassive with difficulty.

“Your City Fathers will vouch for it?”

“Sure. Hazleton—oh, hell, Anderson, what happened to the city manager?”

“He took a branching catwalk farther up,” the perimeter sergeant said. “Didn’t say where he was going.”

It didn’t, after all, pay to be too cautious, Amalfi thought wryly. If his brains hadn’t been concentrating so exclusively on his feet, he would have detected the fact that only one other pair of feet was with him as soon as Hazleton had begun to catfoot it away.

“He’ll be back—I hope,” Amalfi said. “Look, friend, what we need is repair work. We’ve got a bad spindizzy in a hot hold. Can you haul it out and give us a replacement, preferably the newest model you’ve got?”

The garageman considered it. The problem seemed to appeal to him; his whole expression changed, so thoroughly that he looked almost friendly in his intimate ugliness.

“I’ve got a Six-R-Six in storage that might do, if you’ve got the reflux-laminated pediments to mount it on,” he said slowly. “If you haven’t, I’ve also a reconditioned B-C-Seven-Seven-Y that hums as sweetly as new. But I’ve never done any hot hauling before—didn’t know spindizzies ever hotted up enough to notice. Anybody on board your burg that can give me a hand on decontamination?”

“Yes, it’s all set up and ready to ride. Check the color of our money, and let’s get on it.”

“It’ll take a little time to get a crew together,” the garageman said. “By the way, don’t let your men wander around. The cops don’t like it.”

“I’ll do my best.”

The garageman scampered away, dodging in and out among the idle, rust-tinted machines. Amalfi watched him go, marveling anew at how quickly the born technician can be gulled into forgetting who he’s working for, let alone how his work is going to be used. First you mention money—since technies are usually underpaid; you then cap that with a tough and inherently interesting problem—and you have your man. Amalfi was always happy when he met a pragmatist in the enemy’s camp.

“Boss——”

Amalfi spun. “Where the hell have you been? Didn’t you hear me say that this planet is probably taboo to tourists? If you’d been on hand when you were needed, you’d have heard the ‘probably’ knocked out of that statement—to say nothing of speeding matters considerably!”

“I’m aware of that,” Hazleton said evenly. “I took a calculated risk—something you seem to have forgotten how to do, Amalfi. And it paid off. I’ve been over to that other city, and found out something that we needed to know. Incidentally, the graving docks around here are a mess. This one, and the one the other city is in, must be the only ones in operation for hundreds of miles. All the rest are nearly full of sand and rust and flaked concrete.”

“And the other city?” Amalfi said very quietly.

“It’s been garnisheed; there’s no doubt about it. It’s shabby and deserted. Half of it is being held up by buttressing, and it’s got huts pitched in the streets. It’s nearly a hulk. There’s a crew over there putting it in some sort of operating order, but they’re in no hurry, and they aren’t doing a damn thing to make the city habitable—all they want it to do is run. It’s not the city’s own complement, obviously. Where they are, I’m afraid to think.”

“There’s considerable thinking you haven’t done,” Amalfi said. “The original crew is obviously in debtor’s prison. The garage is putting the city in order for some kind of dirty job that they don’t expect it to outlast—and that no city still free could be hired to do at any price.”

“And what would that be?”

“Setting up a planethead on a gas giant,” said Amalfi. “They want to work some low-density, ammonia-methane world with an ice core, a Jupiter-type planet, that they can’t conquer any other way. It’s my guess that they hope to use such a planethead as an inexhaustible source of poison gas.”

“That’s not your only guess,” Hazleton said, his lips thinned. “I expect to be disciplined for wandering off, Amalfi, but I’m a big boy, and won’t have rationalizations palmed off on me just to keep the myth of your omniscience going.”