Dr. Cardenas was a handsome woman, from what I’d heard of her. Was Sam on the hunt again? Does a parrot have feathers?
«Okay,» he said, rubbing his hands together briskly, «now let’s get down to business.»
The firing squad was aiming at me.
«Charlie, you don’t have much experience in business administration, do you?»
Puzzled by his question, I answered, «Hardly any.»
«That’s okay. I can tell you everything you need to know.»
«Need to know for what?»
Sam looked surprised. «To manage the golf course, naturally.»
«Manage it?» My voice squeaked two octaves higher than normal.
«Sure, what else? I’ll be too busy to do it myself.»
Mai gripped my arm. «That’s wonderful!»
«And you, oh beauteous one, will be our pro, of course.» Sam announced, chuckling at his little pun.
«Me?»
Nodding, Sam replied, «Sure, you. This way the two of you can stay together. Sort of a wedding present.» Then he fixed me with a stern gaze. «You do intend to marry the lady, don’t you?»
I blurted, «If she’ll have me!»
Mai squeezed my hand so hard I thought bones would break. I hadn’t realized how strong playing golf had made her.
«Okay, that’s it,» Sam said happily. «You’ll manage the course, Charlie, and Mai, you’ll be the pro.»
«And what will you do, Sam?» Mai asked.
«Me? I’ve got to set up the company that’ll manufacture and sell nanosuits. Kris Cardenas is going to be my partner.»
I felt my jaw drop open. «You mean this whole tournament was just a way of advertising the nanosuits?»
With a laugh, Sam answered, «Got a lot of publicity for the suits, didn’t it? I’m already getting queries from the rock rats, out in the Asteroid Belt. And the university consortium that’s running the Mars exploration team.»
I shook my head in admiration for the man. Sam just sat there grinning down at us. The little devil had opened up a new sport for lunar residents and tourists, solved my legal problem, created a career for me, and found a way for Mai and me to marry. Plus, he was starting a new industry that would revolutionize the spacesuit business.
Before I could find words to thank Sam, Mai asked him, «Will you answer a question for me?»
«Sure,» he said breezily. «Fire away.»
«How did you learn to putt like that, Sam? Some of your putts were nothing short of miraculous.»
Sam pursed his lips, looked up at the ceiling, swiveled back and forth on his chair.
«Come on, Sam,» Mai insisted. «The truth. It won’t go farther than these four walls.»
With a crooked, crafty grin, Sam replied, «You’d be surprised at how much electronics you can pack into a golf ball.»
«Electronics?» I gasped.
«A transmitter in the cups and a receiver in the ball,» Mai said. «Your putts were guided into the cups.»
«Sort of,» Sam admitted.
«That’s cheating!» I exclaimed.
«There’s nothing in the rules against it.»
That’s Sam. As far as he’s concerned, rules are made to bend into pretzels. And looking up at his grinning, freckled face, I just knew he was already thinking about some new scheme. That’s Sam Gunn. Unlimited.
HIGH JUMP
When the human race begins to expand its habitat through the solar system, it won’t be only scientists and engineers who go to other worlds. There will be entrepreneurs like Sam Gunn and Dan Randolph, visionaries like Chet Kinsman and Jamie Waterman, saints, sinners, pilgrims, adventurers …
Adventurers. Some people make adventure their business. And what a business opportunity the hellishly hot surface of the planet Venus will be!
The things a man will do for love.
I had been Hal Prince’s stunt double for more than five years. To the general public he was the greatest daredevil that ever lived, the handsome star of the most exciting adventure videos ever recorded, the tall sandy-haired guy with the flashing smile and twinkling eyes who always did his own stunts.
Well, I had known him when he was Aloysius Prizanski, back before he got his nose fixed, when he’d been a wannabe actor hungry enough to jump into a pool of blazing petrol from the bridge of an ocean liner.
Back then he did his own stunts, sure enough, but once he got so popular that he could command half a bill just for signing a contract, the insurance people insisted that he was just too goddamned valuable to risk.
So I did his stunts. His old pal. His asshole buddy. Ugly old me. It was no big secret in the industry, but as far as the general public was concerned, it was Handsome Hal himself who’d risked his own neck riding the hundred-gee catapult at Moonbase into lunar orbit and sledding down the dry-ice-coated flank of Olympus Mons in nothing more than a Buckyball suit.
To say nothing of skydiving into Vesuvius while it was boiling out steam and the occasional blurp of hot lava. That one cost me three months in a burn recovery center, although I never let Hal know it. He thought I’d just gotten miffed at him and taken off to sulk.
Now I was going to do the high jump for him. On Venus, yet. Pop myself out of an orbiting spacecraft and drop all the way down to the planet’s red-hot surface.
And I mean red-hot. The ground temperature down there is hot enough to melt aluminum. The air pressure is almost a hundred times what it is at sea level on Earth; like the pressure in the ocean, more than a kilometer down.
And by the way, Venus’s air is almost all choking carbon dioxide. The clouds that cover the planet from pole to pole are made of sulfuric acid. And they’re filled with bugs that eat metal, too.
The stunt was to jump from orbit and go all the way down to the ground. I had just come back from the patch-up job after the Vesuvius barbecue. Truth to tell, I was scared into constipation over this stunt.
But I didn’t tell Hal. Or anybody else.
We all have our little secrets. My doubling for him was Hotshot Hal’s secret. But I had a few of my own, too.
Angel Santos doubled for Hal’s female co-stars; if it weren’t for her toughness and quick thinking I’d have been fried inside old Vesuvius.
Angel was really beautifuclass="underline" a face to die for, with big wide-set cornflower blue eyes, full bust, narrow waist, long legs—the works. Don’t strain your eyes looking for her in any of Hal’s videos, though; like me, she was strictly a stunt double, wearing whatever wigs and rigs that were necessary to make her look like Hal’s female co-star—whoever she happened to be.
Angel could’ve been a star in her own right, but she had absolutely no interest in acting. She was hooked on the challenges of danger, just like me. We got along together great, two of a kind. She made me feel really good about myself, too. People looked up from their dinners when I walked into a restaurant with Angel on my arm. I mean people never looked at me. Especially when Heroic Hal was anywhere in sight. Okay, I knew they were looking at Angel, not me, but I got respect for having her on my arm, at least. Boosted my machismo rating with the dumbshit ordinary folks.
But once Angel met with Hedonistic Hal she got hooked on him. I didn’t realize it at first. We’d all go out together, the three of us. It didn’t take long, though, before they started going out without me, just the two of them. I was left out in the cold.
Then came the Venus jump.
I was thinking about packing it in. Let Hal the Heartbreaker get somebody else. He wasn’t thinking about me at all anymore; he only had eyes for Angel. And she clung on him like he was the last lifeboat on the Titanic. She wasn’t even involved in this Venus stunt, it was my trick alone. But she came along for the ride, all the way out to Venus—with Hal the Hunk.