So another phase began for Nelsen. Offices bored him. Ama.s.sing money, per se, meant little to him, except as a success symbol that came out of the life he had known. He figured that a man ought to be a success, even a rough-and-tumble romantic like Ramos, or Joe Kuzak. Or himself, with both distance and home engrained confusingly into his nature.

One thing that Nelsen was, was conscientious. He could choose and stick to a purpose for even longer than it seemed right for him.

Mostly, now, during the long grind of expansion, he was afield.

Disturbances on Earth quieted for a while, as had always happened, so far. The Belt responded with relative peace. Tovie Ceres, the Big Asteroid, which, like the others, should have been open to all nations, but wasn't, kept mostly to its own affairs. There were only the constant dangers, natural, human, and a combination. There was always a job--a convoy to meet, a load of supplies to rush to a distant point, Jolly Lads to scare off. Reckless Ramos might be with Nelsen, or Joe Kuzak who usually operated separately, or a few guards, or several asteroid-hoppers, most of whom were tough and steady and good friends to know. Often enough, Nelsen was alone.

At first, KRNH just handled the usual supplies. But when factory and hydroponic equipment began to arrive, Joe Kuzak and Frank Nelsen might be out establishing a new post. There'd be green help, bubbing out from the Moon, to break in. Nelsen would see new faces that still seemed familiar, because they were like those of the old Bunch, as it had been.

Grim, scared young men, full of wonder. But the thin stream of the adventurous was thickening, as more opportunities opened. Occasionally there was a young couple. _Oh, no_, you thought. Then--_well, maybe_.

That is, if somebody didn't crack up, or get lymph node swellings that wouldn't reduce, and if you didn't have to try to play nursemaid.

Now and then Nelsen was in Pallastown--for business, for relief, for a bit of h.e.l.l-raising; to see Gimp and the David Lesters. Pretty soon there was an heir in the Lester household. Red, healthy, and male.

Cripes--Out Here, too? Okay--josh the parents along. The most wonderful boy in the solar system! Otherwise, matters, there, were much better than before. The camera was in a museum in Washington. The pictures it had contained were on TV, back home. Just another anti-war film, maybe.

But impressive, and _different_. The earnings didn't change Nelsen's life much, nor Gimp's, nor Ramos'. But it sure helped the Lesters.

David Lester had resigned from Archeological Survey. He was getting actually sharp. He was doing independent research, and was setting up his own business in Belt antiques.

Frank Nelsen had another reason for coming to Pallastown. Afield, you avoided beam communication, nowadays, whenever you could. Someone might trace your beam to its source, and jump you for whatever you had. But Gimp Hines could tell Nelsen about the absent Bunch members and the old friends, while they both sat in the little KRNH office in Town.

"... Paul Hendricks is still the same, Frank. New bunch around him...

Too bad we can't call him, now--because the Earth is on the far side of the sun. Mitch Storey just vanished into the Martian thickets, during one of his jaunts. Almost a year ago, now... I didn't see him when I stopped over on Mars, but he was back at the Station once, after that.

Take it easy, Frank. They've looked with helicopters, and even on the ground; you couldn't do any more. I'll keep in touch, to see if anything turns up..."

After a minute, Nelsen relaxed, slightly. "Two-and-Two? I guess he's okay--with Charlie Reynolds looking after him?"

"Peculiar about Charlie," Gimp answered, looking awed and puzzled. "Got the news from old J. John, his granddad, when he acknowledged the receipt of our latest draft, by letter. Hold your hat. Charlie got himself killed... I'll dig the letter out of the file."

Nelsen sat up very straight. "Never mind," he said. "Just tell me more.

Anything can happen."

"Our most promising member," Gimp mused. "He didn't get much. The Venus Expedition had to move some heavy equipment to the top of a mountain, to make some electrostatic tests before a storm. Charlie had just climbed down from the helicopter. A common old lightning bolt hit him. Somebody played _Fire Streak_ on the bagpipes--inside a sealed tent--while they buried him. Otherwise, he didn't even get a proper s.p.a.ceman's funeral.

Venus' escape velocity is almost as high as Earth's. Boosting a corpse up into orbit, just for atmospheric cremation, would have been too much of a waste for the Expedition's rigid economy."

Nelsen had never really been very close to Charlie Reynolds, though he had liked the flamboyant Good Guy. Now, it was all a long ways back, besides. Nelsen didn't feel exactly grief. Just an almost mystical bitterness, a shock and an uncertainty, as if he could depend on nothing.

"So what about Two-and-Two?" he growled, remembering how he used to avoid any responsibility for the big, good-hearted lug; but now he felt surer about himself, and things seemed different.

"I guess the Expedition medic had to straighten him out with devil-killers," Hines answered. "He bubbed all the way back to Earth, alone, to see J. John about Charlie. I beamed him, there, before the Earth hid behind the sun. He was still pretty shaken up. Funny, too--Charlie's opportunity-laden Venus has turned out to be a bust, for two centuries, at least, unless new methods, which aren't in sight, yet, turn up. Sure--at staggering expense, and with efforts on the order of fantasy, reaction motors could be set up around its equator, to make it spin as fast as the Earth. Specially developed green algae have already been seeded all over the planet. They're rugged, they spread fast. But it will take the algae about two hundred years to split the carbon dioxide and give the atmosphere a breathable amount of free oxygen, to say nothing of cracking the poisonous formaldehyde."

"Two-and-Two's back in Jarviston, then?" Nelsen demanded.

"No--not anymore--just gimme breath," Hines went on. "He and Charlie had figured another destination of opportunity--Mercury, the planet nearest the sun, everlasting frozen night on one side, eternal, zinc-melting sunshine on the other. But there's the fringe zone between the two--the Twilight Zone. If you can live under stellene, you've got a better place there than Mars might have been. Colonists are going there, to quit the Earth, to get away from it all. Two-and-Two was about to leave for Mercury, when I last spoke to him. By now he's probably almost there.

And even under the most favorable conditions, Mercury is hard to beam--too much solar magnetic interference."

"That poor sap," Nelsen gruffed.

"It probably isn't that bad, anymore," Hines commented. "Sometime I might go to Mercury, myself--when I get good and sick of sitting on my tail, here--when I always was a man of action! Mercury does have possibilities--plenty of solar power, certainly; plenty of frozen atmosphere on the dark face. Interesting, Frank... Oh, h.e.l.l, I forgot--there's a letter here for you. And a package. Just arrived...

I'll scram, now. Got to go down to the quays. Hold the fort, here, will you?"

Gimp Hines grinned as he left.

Nelsen was glad to be alone. The lonesomeness of the Big Vacuum was getting grimed into him. When he saw the return name and address on the package, and the two hundred-ten dollar postage sticker, he thought, _Cripes--that poor kid--what did I start?_ Then the awful wave of nostalgia for Jarviston, Minnesota, hit him, as he fumbled to open the microfilmed letter capsule, and put it in the viewer.

"h.e.l.lo, Frank--it has to be that, doesn't it, and not Mr. Nelsen, since you've sent me this miraculous bracelet--which I don't dare wear very much, since I don't want to lose an arm to some international--or even interstellar--jewel thief! It makes me feel like the Queen of Something--certainly not Serene, since it implies calmness and repose, which I certainly don't feel--no offense to our Miss Sands, whom I admire enormously. In a very small way I am repaying to you in kind--an item which I made, myself, and which I know that some s.p.a.cemen use inside their Archers. You see, we are all informed in details. Paul, Otto, Chippie Potter and his dog, and other characters whom you won't remember, send their best greetings. Oh, I've got Stardust fever, too, but I'll yield to my folks' wishes and wait, and learn a profession that will be of some use Out There. May you wear what I'm sending in good health, safety and fortune. Send no more staggering gifts, please--I couldn't stand it--but please do write. Tell me how it really is in the Belt. You simply don't realize how much--"

Nance Codiss' missive rattled along, and the scrawled words got to be like small, happy bells inside Nelsen's skull. His crooked grin came out; he unpacked the sweater--creylon wool, very warm, bright red, a bit crude in workmanship here and there--but imagine a girl bothering, these days! He donned the garment and decided it fit fine.

Then he tried to write a letter:

"Hi, Nance! I've just put it on--first time--beautiful! It'll stay right with me. Thanks. Talk about being staggered..."

There he bogged down, some, wondering how much she had changed, wondering just what he ought to say to her, and who these characters that he wouldn't remember, might be. Cripes, how old was she, now?

Seventeen? He ended up taking her at her word. He described Pallastown rather heavy-handedly, and bought some microfilm postcards to go along with his missive, as soon as he went out to mail it.

But a few hours later, from deep in s.p.a.ce, he looked back at the Town, shining in the distance, and in the blue mood of thinking about Charlie Reynolds, Mitch Storey, and Two-and-Two, he wondered how much longer it, or Nance, or anything else, could last. Then he glanced down at the bright sweater, and chuckled...

Unexpectedly, Ramos remained an active member of KRNH Enterprises for over a year. But the end had to come. "I told Art I'd let my dough ride, Frank," he said to Nelsen in the lounge of Post One. "I'll only draw enough earnings to build me a real, deep-s.p.a.ce bubb, nuclear-propelled, and with certain extra gadgets. A few guys have tried to follow the unmanned, instrumented rockets, out to the system of Saturn. n.o.body got back, yet. I think I know what they figured wrong. The instruments showed--well, skip it... I'm going into Town to prepare. It'll take quite a while, so I'll have some fun, too."

Ramos' eyes twinkled with a secret triumph--before the fact.

"You don't argue a fighting rooster out of fighting," Nelsen laughed.

"Besides, it wouldn't be Destiny--or any fun--to succeed. So accept the complimentary comparison--if it fits--which maybe it doesn't, you egotistical bonehead. Good luck--_buena suerte, amigo_. I'll look you up in Town, if I get a chance..."

Nelsen was always busy to the gills. Progress was so smooth for another couple of years, that the hunch of Big Trouble building up, became a gnawing certainty in his nerves.

Of course there were always the Jolly Lads to watch out for--the extreme individualists, s.p.a.ce-twisted and wild. Robbing and murdering could seem easier than digging. Take your loot into Pallastown--who knew you hadn't grubbed it, yourself? Sell it. Get the stink blown off you--forget some terrible things that had happened to you. Have yourself a time. Strike Out again. Repeat...

Nelsen knew that, through the months, he had killed defensively at least twice. Once, with a long-range homing bullet--weapons sanctioned by pious and cautious international agreement, were more lethal, now, to match the weapons of the predatory. Once by splitting a helmet with a rifle barrel. When he was out alone, exploring a new post site on a small asteroid, a starved Tovie runaway had jumped him. Maybe he should regret the end of that incident.

Trips to Pallastown were increasingly infrequent. But there was one time when he almost had come specially to see Ramos' new bubb, still under wraps, supposedly. Well--that erratic character had it out on a long test run. d.a.m.n him! As usual, time was crowding Nelsen. He had to get back on the job. He had just a couple of hours left.

He wrote a letter to Nance Codiss, answering one of hers--funny, he'd never yet tried to contact her vocally. Being busy, being cautious about using a beam--these were good reasons. Now there was hardly enough spare time to reach twice across the light-minutes. Maybe the real truth was that men got strangely shy in the silences of the Belt.

"Dear Nance: You seem to be making fine headway in your new courses. All the good words, for that..."

There were plenty of good words, but he didn't put many of them down. He didn't know if the impulse to write _Darling_, was just his own loneliness, which any girl with a kind word would have filled. He didn't know her, or that part of himself, very well. He kept remembering her as she had been. Then he'd realize that memory wasn't a stable thing to hang onto. Everything changed--how well he had learned that! She was older, now, intelligent, and at school again, studying some kind of medical laboratory technology. Certainly she had become more sophisticated and elusive--her gay letters were just a superficial part of what she must be. And certainly there were dates and boyfriends, and all the usual phases of getting out of step with a mere recollection, like himself. Nelsen had some achy emotions. Should he ask for her picture? Should he send one of himself?

He just scribbled on, ramblingly, as usual. Yep, in a new Archer Seven, you could undo a few clamps, pull a foot up out of a boot, and actually change your socks... Inconsequential nonsense like that. He ended by telling her not to worry about any knicknacks he might send--that they came easy, out here. He microposted the letter, and mailed a square of soft gla.s.s-silk of many colors.

Then he p.r.o.nounced a few cuss words, laughed at himself for getting so serious, shrugged, and with the casualness of hopper with his pockets loaded, moved toward the rec area, which was some distance off.

It was night over this part of rapidly growing Pallastown. Moving along a lighted causeway, he saw the man with the shovel teeth. Glory, had _he_ managed to survive so long? His mere presence, here, seemed like a signal of the end of peace. Nelsen and Ramos used to practice close-contact tactics at zero-G, in s.p.a.ce. So Nelsen didn't even wait for the man to notice him. He leaped, and sped like an arrow, thudding into the guy's stomach with both of his boot heels. Shovel Teeth was hurled fifty yards backward, Nelsen hurtling with him all the way.

Unless Nelsen wanted to kill him, there wasn't any more to do. Partial revenge.

He wasn't worried about anybody except the guy's Jolly Lad henchmen.

There was n.o.body close by. Now he did a quick fade, sure that n.o.body had seen who he was, during the entire episode. No use to call the cops--there were too many uncertainties about the setup in wild, polyglot Pallastown. Nelsen moved on to the rec area.

He didn't go into a garishly splendid place, named _The Second Stop_.

Thus, he didn't see its owner, whose ident.i.ty he had already heard about, of course. Not that he wouldn't have liked to. But there wasn't any time to get involved in a long chat with a woman... Nor did he see the tall, skinny, horse-faced comic, known only as Igor, go through slapstick acrobatics that once would have been impossible...