“Anytime,” Peterson said. “And Ben, if you need some liniment for your backside later on, I think I can find some in the shop.”
Ben grinned and started up the ramp that led into the house. Strong and silent, that was Elmo Peterson.
But this time, somehow, Elmo’s silence had an ominous ring to it. It was no accident that the Spacer Council was convening on the eve of a major Earth raid. Ben Trefon was certain of that. And if he had suspected trouble when his father’s summons came, he was sure of it now.
The House of Trefon on Mars was not large, as Spacer houses go. You could find a dozen larger houses scattered here and there across the surface of Mars, or on Juno or Ceres, on Ganymede and Europa of Jupiter, or even on Titan and Japetus of Saturn, if you knew where to look for them. Probably no more than a dozen Spacer families were ever living in the House of Trefon at any one time… and yet this house, like all large Spacer houses, was a buzzing community in itself, with its own warehouses and storerooms, its own schools, its own laboratories and its own fabricating plants. And like other Spacer dwellings, Ben Trefon thought, it had an uncanny air of impermanence about it, as though it had been thrown together willy-nilly, a piece at a time, and might suddenly vanish again overnight in just as haphazard a fashion as it was built.
Partly, of course, the architecture of the place led to this feeling: the tall, spidery arches, the vast expanses of the dome-ceilinged rooms, the shimmering movement of the plastic sheet walls. Spacers had enough of tight quarters and enclosed spaces in their ships; in their houses they wanted space, and freedom and long vistas. But even more important, the houses reflected the people who lived in them. No Spacer, once he was out of his childhood classrooms, ever seemed to stay in one place very long at a time. Spacers laughed with open scorn at the crowded, hive-like cities of the Earthbound people, and really felt completely at home only in the cabins of their roving ships, moving at will through the length and breadth of the solar system, through the familiar blackness and the sweeping distances of interplanetary space.
Yet Ben Trefon now felt a surge of pleasure and contentment as he walked up the ramp and into the great receiving hall of his father’s house. He sniffed at the familiar tinge of ozone in the artificial atmosphere and listened to the soft, solid thump of his feet on the red sandstone flagstones as he crossed through to the private wings of the house. He was a small, wiry youth with a spring in his step and the first hint of premature gray in his hair. With the rich oxygen ratio in the house his cheeks were pinker than usual, and he felt the usual exhilaration in spite of the worry that was nagging at his mind.
He crossed the concourse leading to the community center and common rooms. Once inside his family’s private quarters, he checked the call board and saw that only half a dozen families were checked in. He realized then what it was he had missed as he came in through the entry hall. There had been no sign of the crowd of small boys who were usually running and shouting, chasing each other to be first to greet him on other occasions when he had returned to the House of Trefon.
Ben scratched his head, flipped on the daylight screens, and dropped his space pack on a canvas armchair as late afternoon light filled the room. This was a combination study and living room, with books and tapes piled in disorderly array against the plastic walls; farther back were the sun deck and the sleeping quarters, the only part of the private quarters that Dad ever managed to keep as neat and sparkling as when Mom was alive. Ben drifted from room to room, eager to see his father, wondering, as he had wondered so often before, if things would have been different for them all if his mother had lived long enough for him to know her. Not that he didn’t get along with Dad; they were friends, and they respected each other. But always there were Spacer affairs to be taken care of, reports to prepare for the Council, plans to be made, and never somehow quite enough time for father and son to get to know each other well.
Ben Trefon felt his father’s presence in the room before he heard him. Ivan Trefon might have been a carbon copy of his son, except for the added years that showed in the lines of his face and the whiteness of his hair. He took off his glasses and stared at his son for a long moment, then touched his forehead in a mock salute. “So the astronaut returns,” he said wryly. “Welcome home. For a minute there I thought old Dusty Red had you for sure.”
Ben flushed at the old Spacer nickname for Mars, and at the gentle warning his father was implying. He knew as well as any Spacer the terrible toll of lives old Dusty Red had taken before ships had been equipped with null-gravity units. “I misjudged it,” Ben said. “I should never have tried landing without null-grav.”
Ivan Trefon chuckled. “You don’t look very penitent, somehow. Just be glad a license inspector wasn’t watching you land. You’d have gone back to the practice ships for the next five years.” The older man regarded his son quizzically. “Though I have to give you credit. Once you’d trapped yourself, you pulled it off pretty well. I’d have gone into the Rift for sure.”
“They teach us to fly ships these days, not just pull levers,” Ben replied. “And that was one of the new S-80’s, too. Have you ever flown one? They make the old four-seaters look like cargo ships, handle so smoothly you hardly know you’re out there.” He hesitated, trying to read his father’s face. “I should have been checking in at the rendezvous with that ship right now, dad. As it is, I’ll miss the final briefing. Why did you want me here?”
Ivan Trefon looked suddenly older, and very tired. “Maybe just an old man’s whim. Wanted a look at my boy before he left on his first raid.”
“And the Council meeting?” Ben said. “Is that an old man’s whim? You aren’t that old, dad. What’s gone wrong? Something surely has. And it’s got something to do with the raid. What is it?” The older man turned away and shrugged his shoulders. “It’s very simple,” he said quietly. “I want to stop this raid. I’ve been trying ever since it was planned. I’ve spent the last three days trying to get the Council to put the brakes on it, and so far I haven’t won. It’s beginning to look as if I’m not going to, either.” He looked across at Ben. “So there you have it.”
Ben’s eyes reflected his astonishment. “Stop the raid? But I don’t understand. Why?”
“Because it has to be stopped.”
“That’s no answer, and you know it.”
Ivan Trefon smiled ruefully. “So the Council has been telling me. If I had a better answer, maybe they’d listen.” He stopped smiling and looked at Ben. “This is your first raid, isn’t it?”
“The first real one. I’ve been down twice with a scouting party, and once on a mock raid, but never the real thing before.”
“What do you know about this raid? What’s your objective? What are you striking for?”
“Food,” Ben Trefon said. “Wheat, beef, staples… supplies are getting low, and we can’t live on Martian barley.”
“Where’s the strike point?”
“North American mid-continent. There’s a central food warehouse there with over a thousand wheat storage bins. Our contact men already have them rigged with null-grav units. All we need is an orbit ship to scoop them in, and a crew to go down and activate the units.”
“And fight off the guard units stationed in the warehouse,” Ivan Trefon said.
“Even that’s been taken care of,” Ben said eagerly. “The word has been leaked out that our strike point will be a South American food dump. And they’ve garrisoned that one to the teeth and pulled most of the guard strength away from the real objective.”
“And what about women?” the older man said.