Marconi said tardily, "Easy, Ross."
"Easy! You've said it, Marconi: 'Easy.' Everything's so damned easy and so damned boring that I'm just about ready to blow! I've got to do something," he repeated. "I'm getting nowhere! I push papers around and then I push them back again. You know what happens next. You get soft and paunchy. You find yourself going by the book instead of by your head. You're covered, if you go by the book—no matter what happens. And you might just as well be dead!"
"Now, Ross———"
"Now, hell!" Ross flared. "Marconi, I swear I think there's something wrong with me! Look, take Ghost Town for instance. Ever wonder why nobody lives there, except a couple of crazy old hermits?"
"Why, it's Ghost Town," Marconi explained. "It's deserted."
"And why is it deserted? What happened to the people who used to live there?"
Marconi shook his head. "You need a vacation, son," he said sympathetically. "That was a long time ago. Hundreds of years, maybe."
"But where did the people go?" Ross persisted desperately. "All of the city was inhabited hundreds of years ago —the city was twice as big as it is now. How come?"
Marconi shrugged. "Dunno."
Ross collapsed. "Don't know. You don't know, I don't know, nobody knows. Only thing is, I care!
I'm curious. Marconi, I get—well, moody. Depressed. I get to worrying about crazy things. Ghost Town, for one. And why can't they find a secretary for me? And am I really different from everybody else or do I just think so—and doesn't that mean that I'm insane?"
He laughed. Marconi said warmly, "Ross, you aren't the only one; don't ever think you are. I went through it myself. Found the answer, too. You wait, Ross."
He paused. Ross said suspiciously, "Yeah?"
Marconi tapped the breast pocket with the photo of Lurline. "She'll come along," he said.
Ross managed not to sneer in his face. "No," he said wearily. "Look, I don't advertise it, but I was married once. I was eighteen, it lasted for a year and I'm the one who walked out. Flat-fee settlement; it took me five years to pay off the loan, but I never regretted it."
Marconi began gravely, "Sexual incompatibility——"
Ross cut him off with an impatient gesture. "In that department," he said, "it so happens she was a genius. But——"
"But?"
Ross shrugged. "I must have been crazy," he said shortly. "I kept thinking that she was half-dead, dying on the vine like the rest of Halsey's Planet. And I must still be crazy, because I still think so."
The little man involuntarily felt his breast pocket. He said gently, "Maybe you've been working too hard."
"Too hard!" Ross laughed, a curious blend of true humor and self-disgust. "Well," he admitted, "I need a change, anyhow. I might as well be on a longliner. At least I'd have my spree to look back on."
"No!" Marconi said, so violently that Ross slopped the drink he was lifting to his mouth.
Ross looked hard at the little man—hard and speculatively. "No, then," he said. "It was just a figure of speech, of course. But tell me something, won't you, Marconi?"
"Tell you what?"
"Tell me why such a violent reaction to the word 'longliner.' I want to know."
"Hell, Ross," the little man grumbled, "you know what a longliner is. Gutter-scrapings for crews; nothing for a man like you."
"I want to know more," Ross insisted. "When I ask you what a longliner is, what the crew do with themselves for two or three centuries, you change the subject. You always change the subject!
Maybe you know something I don't know. I want to know what it is, and this time the subject doesn't get changed. You don't get off the hook until I find out." He took a sip of his drink and leaned back. "Tell me about longliners," he said. "I've never seen one coming in; it's been fifteen years or so since that bucket from Sirius IV, hasn't it? But you were on the job then."
Marconi was no longer a man in love or one of the few people whom Ross considered to be wholly alive—like hun. He was a hard-eyed little stranger with a stubborn mouth and an ingratiating veneer. In short he was again a trader, and a good one.
"I'll tell you anything I know," Marconi declared positively, and insincerely. "Tend to that fellow first though, will you?" He pointed to a uniformed Yards messenger whose eye had just alighted on Ross. The man threaded his way, stumbling, through the tables and laid a sealed envelope down in the puddle left by Ross's drink.
"Sorry, sir," he said crisply, wiped off the envelope with his handkerchief and, for lagniappe, wiped the puddle off the table into Ross's lap.
Speechless, Ross signed for the envelope on a red-tabbed slip marked URGENT * PRIORITY * RUSH. The messenger saluted, almost putting his own eye out, and left, crashing into tables and chairs.
"Half-dead," Ross muttered, following him with his eyes. "How the devil do they stay alive at all?"
Marconi said, unsmiling, "You're taking this kick pretty seriously, Ross. I admit he's a little clumsy, but——"
"But nothing," said Ross. "Don't try to tell me you don't know something's wrong, Marconi! He's a bumbling incompetent, and half his generation is just like him." He looked bitterly at the envelope and dropped it on the table again. "More manifests," he said. "I swear I'll start throwing tableware if I have to check another bill of lading. Brighten my day, Marconi; tell me about the longliners. You're not off the hook yet, you know."
Marconi signaled for another drink. "All right," he said. "Marconi tells all about longliners.
They're ships. They go from the planet of one star to the planet of another star. It takes a long time, because stars are many light-years apart and rocket ships cannot travel as fast as light.
Einstein said so—whoever he was. Do we start with the Sirius IV ship? I was around when it came in, all right. Fifteen years ago, and Halsey's Planet is still enjoying the benefits of it. And so is Leverett and Sons Trading Corporation. They did fine on flowers from seeds that bucket brought, they did fine on sugar perch from eggs that bucket brought. I've never had it myself. Raw fish for dessert! But some people swear by it—at five shields a portion. They can have it."
"The hook, Marconi," Ross reminded grimly.
Trader Marconi laughed amiably. "Sorry. Well, what else? Pictures and music, but I'm not much on them. I do read, though, and as a reader I say, God bless that bucket from Sirius IV. We never had a novelist like Morris Halli-day on this planet—or an essayist like Jay Waring. Let's see, there have been eight Halliday novels off the microfilms so far, and I think Leverett still has a couple in the vaults. Leverett must be——"
"Marconi. I don't want to hear about Leverett and Sons. Or Morris Halliday, or Waring. I want to hear about long-liners."
"I'm trying to tell you," Marconi said sullenly, the mask down.
"No, you're not. You're telling me that the longline ships go from one stellar system to another with merchandise. I know that."
"Then what do you want?"
"Don't be difficult, Marconi. I want to know the facts.All about longliners. The big hush-hush. The candid explanations that explain nothing—except that a starship is a starship. I know that they're closed-system, multigeneration jobs; a group of people get in on Sirius IV and their-great-great-great-great-grandchildren come giggling and stumbling out on Halsey's Planet. I know that every couple of generations your firm—and mine, for that matter— builds one with profits that would be taxed off anyway and slings it out, stocked with seeds and film and sound tape and patent designs and manufacturing specifications for every new gimmick on the market, in the hope that it'll be back long after we're dead with a similar cargo to enrich your firm's and my firm's then-current owners. Sounds silly —but, as I say, it's tax money anyhow. I know that your firm and mine staff the ships with half a dozen bums of each sex, who are loaded aboard with a dandy case of delirium tremens, contracted from spending their bounty money the only way they know how. And that's just about all I know. Take it from there, Marconi. And be specific."