Interstellar travel -- Fiction; Science fiction; Space colonies -- Fiction
Ross licked his lips. “You mean,” he said, “you want to make us look
more like you gentlemen, is that it?”
“_I_ want!” Sam repeated in bafflement. Over his shoulder he roared,
“Ben, what kind of creeps are you saddling me with?”
Ben, looking worried, said, “Holy Jones, Sam, I don’t get it either. It
was a perfectly normal deal. This guy came up to me in Jones’s Joint and
made a pitch. He knew the setup all right, and he had the money with
him. Six hundred Joneses, cold cash; and it wasn’t funny money, either.”
His face clouded. “I did think, though,” he mentioned, “that he said two
women and one man. But Paul Jones picked them up right at the
rendezvous, so it must’ve been the right ones.”
He glowered suspiciously at Ross and the others. “Come to think of it,”
he said, “maybe not. Tell you what, Sam, you just sit tight here for
twenty minutes or so.” And he hurried out of the room.
One of the other Joneses said curtly, “Sit down.” Ross, Bernie, and
Helena found chairs lined up against a wall; they sat. A different Jones
rummaged in a stack of papers on a table; he handed something to each of
them. “Relax,” he advised. Obediently the three spacefarers opened the
magazines he gave them. When they were settled, most of the Joneses,
after a whispered conference, went out. The one that was left said, “No
talking. If we made a mistake, we’re sorry. Meanwhile, you do what
you’re told.”
Ross found that his magazine was called _By Jones_; it seemed to be a
periodical devoted to entertaining news and gossip of sports, fashion,
and culture. He stared at an article headed “Be Glad the People’s Police
Are Watching YOU!”, but the words made little sense. He tried to think;
but somehow he couldn’t find a point at which to grasp the flickering
mass of impressions that were circling through his brain. Nothing seemed
to make a great deal of sense any more; and Ross suddenly realized that
he was very, very tired.
His mind an utter blank, he sat and waited.
It was twenty minutes and a bit more. Then the door flew open and half a
dozen Joneses burst in. Even at first sight, Ross could tell that three
of them were newcomers. For one thing, two were women; and the third,
though red-haired, tall and gangling, had a nose a full centimeter
shorter than any of the others, and his hair was crisply curled.
“All right, you Peepeece!” snarled the first Jones. “You found what you
were looking for—now try to get out!”
Helena did the talking. It wasn’t Ross’s idea, but when her heel
crunched down on his instep he was too startled to object, and from then
on he didn’t get a chance to get a word in edgewise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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