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There was sound- and vibration-insulation. Even Davy's slight fear was more than half thrill. At the new Minneapolis port, Nelsen delivered David Lester, Junior into the care of his grandmother, who seemed much more human than Nelsen once had thought long ago. Then he excused himself quickly.
Nelsen had a powerful urge to talk to the old man who was his long-time friend, and who had said little all during the session, though he knew more about space travel than any of them as much as anybody can know without ever having been off the Earth. "Hey, Paul," Frank called in a low tone, leaning his elbows across a workbench. "Yeah?" "Nothing," Frank Nelsen answered with a lopsided smile.
"We have limited facilities for this purpose. The U.N.S.F. even less. However, an escort is due in, now. We can move out again, with you, in seven hours." "Thank you, sir," Nelsen responded. Gimp Hines had the better part of the supplies to be purchased already lined up at the warehouses. Nelsen counted the money he had left.
Noting its drift course, Nelsen left the wreckage, and hurried back to Post Seven, before other Jolly Lads could catch up and avenge their pals. "Fanshaw's groups will fight it out for a new leader, Joe," he said. "That should keep them busy, for a while..." Succeeding months were quieter. But the Tovies had lost no advantage.
Thus, Nelsen glimpsed much territory the splashed, irregular shape of Serenitatis, the international base on the mare, the dust sea of the same name; the radiating threads of trails and embryo highways, the ever-widening separation of isolated domes and scattered human diggings and workings faintly scratched in the lunar crust, as, at a still great height, Frank's gaze swept outward from the greatest center of human endeavor on the Moon.
"Also one for you, Nelsen. They just came ordinarily I wouldn't deliver them till tomorrow morning. But you see how it is." A long, white envelope was in Frank Nelsen's hands. In its upper left-hand corner was engraved: UNITED STATES SPACE FORCE RECRUITING SECTION WASHINGTON, D.C. "Jeez, Frankie Charlie you made it open 'em, quick!" Two-and-Two said. Frank was about to do so.
Regardless of its mysterious intentional function, it could be a bracelet. To him, just then, it was only a trinket that he had picked up. Before he wrapped and addressed the package, he put a note inside: "Hi, Nance Codiss! Thinking about you and all the neighbors. This might reach you by Christmas. Remember me? Frank Nelsen." Postage was two hundred dollars, which seemed a trifle.
Though he had sensed it coming and had met it calmly, the Tiflin switch was something that Frank Nelsen had trouble getting over. It confused him. It made him want to laugh. Another thing that began to bother him even more was the realization that the violence, represented by Fessler, Fanshaw, Parnay, and thousands of others like them back through history, was bound to crop up again.
The mottled Moon rode high. Big tires whispered on damp concrete. Lights blinked past. The trucks curved around corners, growled up grades, highballed down. There were pauses at all-night drive-ins, coffees misguidedly drunk in a blurred, fur-tongued half wakefulness that seemed utterly bleak. Oh, hell, Frank Nelsen thought, wasn't it far better to be home in bed, like Jig Hollins?
The first one was tall and lean. Then he saw the profile of a lean face with a bent nose, heard a mockingly apologetic "Oh-oh..." and didn't quite realize that this was Tiflin, the harbinger of misfortune, before it was too late to collar him. Nelsen followed as soon as he could push his way from the packed house. But pursuit was hopeless in the crowded causeway outside.
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