They said they'd see, but I knew I wasn't important enough to swing it.
All these little things put me on edge, and any psychologist will tell you it doesn't take something big to drive you bats. I was sick of being ignored, sick of being neglected.
That's when I started to think about Deep Space. There were billions of square miles of nothingness out there, dotted with too many stars to count. There were enough Earth-type planets for every man, woman and child. There had to be a spot for me.
I bought a Universe Light List, and a tattered Galactic Pilot. I read through the Gravity Tide Book, and the Interstellar Pilot Charts. Finally I figured I knew as much as I'd ever know.
All my savings went into an old Chrysler Star Clipper. This antique leaked oxygen along its seams. It had a touchy atomic pile, and spacewarp drives that might throw you practically anywhere. It was dangerous, but the only life I was risking was my own. At least, that's what I thought.
So I got my passport, blue clearance, red clearance, numbers certificate, space-sickness shots and deratification papers. At the job I collected my last day's pay and waved to the cameras. In the apartment, I packed my clothes and said good-bye to the recorders. On the street, I shook hands with my poor Spy and wished him luck.
I had burned my bridges behind me. All that was left was final clearance, so I hurried down to the Final Clearance Office. A clerk with white hands and a sun lamp tan looked at me dubiously.
"Where did you wish to go?" he asked me. "Space," I said.
"Of course. But where in space?"
"I don't know yet," I said. "Just space. Deep Space. Free Space."
The clerk sighed wearily. "You'll have to be more explicit than that, if you want a clearance. Are you going to settle on a planet in American Space? Or did you wish to emigrate to British Space? Or Dutch Space? Or French Space?"
"I didn't know space could be owned," I said.
"Then you don't keep up with the times," he told me, with a superior smirk. "The United States has claimed all space between coordinates 2XA and D2B, except for a small and relatively unimportant segment which is claimed by Mexico. The Soviet Union has coordinates 3DB to LO2 — a very bleak region, I can assure you. And then there is the Belgian Grant, the Chinese Grant, the Ceylonese Grant, the Nigerian Grant —"
I stopped him. "Where is Free Space?" I asked.
"There is none."
"None at all? How far do the boundary lines extend?"
"To infinity," he told me proudly.
For a moment it fetched me up short. Somehow I had never considered the possibility of every bit of infinite space being owned. But it was natural enough. After all, somebody had to own it.
"I want to go into American Space," I said. It didn't seem to matter at the time, although it turned out otherwise.
The clerk nodded sullenly. He checked my records back to the age of five — there was no sense in going back any further — and gave me the Final Clearance.
The spaceport had my ship all serviced, and I managed to get away without blowing a tube. It wasn't until Earth dwindled to a pinpoint and disappeared behind me that I realized that I was alone.
Fifty hours out I was making a routine inspection of my stores, when I observed that one of my vegetable sacks had a shape unlike the other sacks. Upon opening it I found a girl, where a hundred pounds of potatoes should have been.
A stowaway. I stared at her, open-mouthed.
"Well," she said, "are you going to help me out? Or would you prefer to close the sack and forget the whole thing?"
I helped her out. She said, "Your potatoes are lumpy."
I could have said the same of her, with considerable approval. She was a slender girl, for the most part, with hair the reddish blond color of a flaring jet, a pert, dirt-smudged face and brooding blue eyes. On Earth, I would gladly have walked, ten miles to meet her. In space, I wasn't so sure.
"Could you give me something to eat?" she asked. "All I've had since we left is raw carrots."
I fixed her a sandwich. While she ate, I asked, "What are you doing here?"
"You wouldn't understand," she said, between mouthfuls.
"Sure I would."
She walked to a porthole and looked out at the spectacle of stars — American stars, most of them — burning in the void of American space.
"I wanted to be free," she said.
"Huh?"
She sank wearily on my cot. "I suppose you'd call me a romantic," she said quietly. "I'm the sort of fool who recites poetry to herself in the black night, and cries in front of some absurd little statuette. Yellow autumn leaves make me tremble, and dew on a green lawn seems like the tears of all Earth. My psychiatrist tells me I'm a misfit."
She closed her eyes with a weariness I could appreciate. Standing in a potato sack for fifty hours can be pretty exhausting.
"Earth was getting me down," she said. "I couldn't stand it — the regimentation, the discipline, the privation, the cold war, the hot war, everything. I wanted to laugh in free air, run through green fields, walk unmolested through gloomy forests, sing —"
"But why did you pick on me?"
"You were bound for freedom," she said. "I'll leave, if you insist."
That was a pretty silly idea, out in the depths of space. And I couldn't afford the fuel to turn back.
"You can stay," I said.
"Thank you," she said very softly. "You do understand."
"Sure, sure," I said. "But we'll have to get a few things straight. First of all —" But she had fallen asleep on my cot, with a trusting smile on her lips.
Immediately I searched her handbag. I found five lipsticks, a compact, a phial of Venus V perfume, a paper-bound book of poetry, and a badge that read: Special Investigator, FBI.
I had suspected it, of course. Girls don't talk that way, but Spies always do.
It was nice to know my government was still looking out for me. It made space seem less lonely.
The ship moved into the depths of American Space. By working fifteen hours out of twenty-four, I managed to keep my spacewarp drive in one piece, my atomic piles reasonably cool, and my hull seams tight. Mavis O'Day (as my Spy was named) made all meals, took care of the light housekeeping, and hid a number of small cameras around the ship. They buzzed abominably, but I pretended not to notice.
Under the circumstances, however, my relations with Miss O'Day were quite proper.
The trip was proceeding normally — even happily — until something happened.
I was dozing at the controls. Suddenly an intense light flared on my starboard bow. I leaped backward, knocking over Mavis as she was inserting a new reel of film into her number three camera.
"Excuse me," I said.
"Oh, trample me anytime," she said.
I helped her to her feet. Her supple nearness was dangerously pleasant, and the tantalizing scent of Venus V tickled my nostrils.
"You can let me go now," she said.
"I know," I said, and continued to hold her. My mind inflamed by her nearness, I heard myself saying, "Mavis — I haven't known you very long, but —"
"Yes, Bill?" she asked.
In the madness of the moment I had forgotten our relationship of Suspect and Spy. I don't know what I might have said. But just then a second light blazed outside the ship.
I released Mavis and hurried to the controls. With difficulty I throttled the old Star Clipper to an idle, and looked around.
Outside, in the vast vacuum of space, was a single fragment of rock. Perched upon it was a child in a spacesuit, holding a box of flares in one hand and a tiny spacesuited dog in the other.
Quickly we got him inside and unbuttoned his spacesuit.
"My dog —" he said.
"He's all right, son," I told him.