Radiations had shorted his brilliant pilot's
brain, left him an aimless, childish hulk. Yet
Rhiannon had his moments—when he needed them.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1949.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Echoed by the sloping, sun-drenched concrete walls, booming above thehigh, bony clatter of monorail cranes, shaming the entire fuming,metallic hubbub of Boat Bed 52, the sound might have been the cavernousindignation of some giant beast being dragged zoo-ward from aBio-Institute boat. It was, however, a voice, singing:
Mountainous Rhiannon couldn't remember the last word. The cloudedcrystal, that was Rhiannon. He killed his buffing-ray and aimed abellow that not only shivered the eardrums of its target but woke upSergeant Atoms a hundred feet below, bringing him to his feet with anadoring bark.
"Hey, Stevie, what'sa last word?"
Steve Podalski swung his legs into view and slid carelessly downthe dull metal roundness of tube fourteen, like a boy on a barrel.His magnetic boots thunked onto tube thirteen and took hold. He gaveRhiannon a look compounded of acid and pity. "Go to hell with yournoise."
Off at the other end of Bed 52 a gong sounded its invitation to ceasework and relax for a while. The twelve Navy spaceboats in 52, linedhip to hip like reclining madames on their slanting cradles, seemedsuddenly to begin to shed their skins as a solid parasitica of out-shipworkers melted in streams toward the upthrust frameworks of the lifts.
"I comin gout." A small cabbagelike Asteroidal came out of the smudgydarkness of the tube, a scraping-ray in each flat tentacle. "I knockingoff." Without a break in its fluid motion it climbed onto Rhiannon'sarm and couched itself in the angle of his elbow.
"Yeah, me too. Coming, Stevie?"
Podalski shook his head.
He stood and watched Rhiannon and Tweety—Tieu-tuiey was its givenname, but to pronounce it correctly always sounded a little gay—maketheir way toward the lift. He shook his head again. Once a pilot, hethought, not necessarily always a pilot. Space did rotten things to menwho got careless with their radiation screens. It blotched their minds,tossed up fences around memory and intelligence.
A most brilliant crystal—that's what Rhiannon had once been.
Sixty feet away and four stories above the concrete floor of Bed 52, aman stood by the curving window of Karrin's office and watched Rhiannondescend in the lift. He was a small, padded man with the sly look ofthe lower Mars suburbs about him.
"Tubemonkey," he said, curling his lips over the word.
Karrin raised his sober, business-man's eyes from their inspection ofthe briefcase on the desk before him. "He'll do perfectly, Lin.