On the Spacefront
by Jeff Gaba
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
Bloom may have been afraid of small ugly dogs, but he was not afraid of Sami. “That little shit set me up,” Bloom thought, and he raced back to the Spacer hangout to get his hands on Sami.
He pushed open the door to the Union Hall and, as he entered the room, he had a feeling of rats scurrying from the light. A few Spacers went behind the piles of docking equipment that lined the walls and some came forward to confront him. Most of these Spacers were fat and muscular, and, although they didn’t make little clicking sounds with their teeth, Bloom felt as threatened as he had with the ugly “chihuahuas.” Looking for Sami at the Union Hall, Bloom decided, might not have been the smartest move he could make.
“Sorry I can’t stay,” said Bloom, and he jerked the door open and ran back into the street. Some of the Spacers tried to follow him. But, fortunately for Bloom, they were big but not very fast. He would have been preoccupied with wondering why the Spacers had turned on him if he hadn’t been obsessed with another thought. He was certain he had seen Grillo fleeing with others at the Hall when Grillo should have been safely locked into the freighter ready for launch.
When Bloom was sure he had outrun the Spacers, he slowed down and walked as inconspicuously as he could down a street heading for the “safety” of the corporate jail where he hoped to find Stark.
He was still some distance from the jail when, to his surprise, Jid stepped out of the shadows in front of him. “Bloom,” Jid said, “what are you doing here? You look a mess, as usual. Need some help?”
It took a second for Bloom to catch his breath, and then he answered. “What’s going on with the Spacers? Sami just dumped me with a bunch of Hinas, and the Spacers at the Hall came after me. What did I do?”
“Do, Bloom?” Jid replied. “A Terran doesn’t have to do anything to piss off a Spacer; you guys do that as natural as breathing. But I told you, Mr. Professor, that you picked a group to study that don’t like people asking questions. Or maybe it’s just because you’re ugly. Could be anything. Whatever it is, come with me. Let’s get you safe and see if we can sort this out.”
As they hurried down the street together, Bloom didn’t see the blackjack that Jid slipped from his coat pocket. And he certainly didn’t see the blow that came down on his head. All he was sure he saw were more stars swimming in his head.
* * *
Bloom struggled back to consciousness, hoping that he would find a naked green girl in bed with him. No such luck. Bloom realized he was tied to a chair. He didn’t recognize the surroundings, but they seemed well lived-in. There were a few beds and clothes were strewn on the floor. Half-eaten food was lying on a table. Maybe, he thought in a desperate attempt to ward off his terror, I’ve been kidnapped by a fraternity, and I’m being held in the frat house. Or maybe not, he was forced to conclude.
There were several Spacers talking together in the room, and they had not noticed he was awake. Bloom closed his eyes and listened to their talk.
“Let’s just kill him and feed him to the Hinas,” said one. “He saw Grillo, and we don’t know what else he knows. Let’s not find out. Let’s just kill him. Sami was an idiot for letting him get so close to us. It would suit me if Sami was next on the list.”
A fat Spacer he had seen named Frayd shut him up. “Kill him? Damn straight we’re going to kill him. But we’re not feeding him to any Hina. I’ve just had a billion Terros idea. Can’t believe nobody thought of it before. Let’s fill him full of lead and ship his body out as cargo.” The others looked at Frayd for a minute and then they all, every one of them, began to laugh. “Genius,” one said.
Bloom didn’t see the humor. On the other hand, he thought being shot to death might be preferable to being eaten by Hinas. On the third hand, Bloom didn’t find either choice acceptable. ”How the hell do I get out of this?” he thought.
It was then that the door to the room exploded and half a dozen armed soldiers and Stark burst into the room.
* * *
Two hours later, Bloom was sitting with Stark in an office at the corporate jail. “I keep rescuing you,” Stark said coldly. “First, my agent saved you by shooting the Hina, and now I had to waste manpower to get you out of the Union Hall. You, sir, are much cost with no obvious benefit. You’re a waste of a perfectly good tracking implant.
“As a result of your efforts, we’ve arrested a few Spacers for holding and threatening you. But, hell, I’ve done that myself. They’re not talking, and around here it’s not much of a crime to threaten an off-world stranger, especially a Terran. Worse, all the Hinas you say attacked you have alibis. Once again you are useless to me.
“And, for your information,” she continued, “the freighter left on schedule with Grillo on board, made its two calculated flics and has already landed on Briton VI; a perfectly normal flight with no mass discrepancies. It will be returning to Sigma V in a few days with a new load of cargo. We’re certainly no closer to finding out how they are smuggling the stuff. So have you anything else to tell me before I throw you back to the Spacers?”
“Not much,” said Bloom. “Unless you’d like to know how the smuggling works and how to shut it down.”
Stark looked at him sternly. “In our meetings,” she said, “you may have noticed that I don’t have much of a sense of humor. I’ve certainly noticed the same of you. So, Professor-Doctor Bloom, what do you think you have learned that we haven’t?”
“Happy to tell you all the things I know that you don’t,” said Bloom leaning forward in his chair. “But promise me you’ll let me off this rock. It’s the least you can do.”
“Bloom, even you can’t imagine the least I can do for you. But, if what you think you know is worth it to me, I would be inclined to grant your ‘request.’ Talk to me.”
“You’re right,” said Bloom. “It’s the Spacers, or some of them at least, who arrange for the smuggling. And how they do it has everything to do with ‘flic theory’ and the problem of smuggling the contraband mineral without altering the precisely calculated mass of the starship.
“I was immediately struck by the Spacers’ emphasis on their weight. I never thought it had anything to do with their ideas of beauty or as a display of their wealth. Jid told me that being a ‘biggun’ was a contemptuous way that experienced Spacers showed their hatred of Terrans. That may be true enough, and it does make fat Spacers more likely to be selected as crew. But there is another way that a fat Spacer differs from a thin Spacer: more mass. That’s obvious, but that simply correlates with our problem; it doesn’t explain it.
“I am sure you will soon get to some kind of point, Bloom,” Stark said.
“Humorless and impatient,” Bloom said. “You are quite a prize.” To Stark’s irritation, Bloom was obviously enjoying himself. “Another thing surprised me. When they were about to kill me, a particularly obnoxious Spacer said they should ‘fill me full of lead’ and send my body home. This suggestion produced a lot of laughs and, frankly, admiration from the others.
“I, at first, assumed that ‘filling me full of lead’ referred to shooting me with ballistic bullets. But why, I thought, would Spacers use an archaic phrase referring to archaic weapons. Then, being the unimaginative guy I am, I thought: What if they meant the threat literally? What if they were laughing about actually filling my body with lead? You know: lead, the element Pb, plombium. One thing you can say about lead; it has a lot of weight per volume. It seemed that the Spacers seemed obsessed with getting a lot of mass manifested on the freighters.
“I was also surprised when I saw Grillo, a ‘biggun’ Spacer, at the Union Hall before the other Spacers grabbed me. He was supposed to have been weighed and secured on a freighter. Why would a Spacer sign on to a voyage and then jump ship before the ship even left? And how could the mass of a Spacer be relevant to smuggling if the heavy Spacer didn’t even ship out? All curious and contradictory.
“Finally, I learned the obvious: nobody cares much about Spacers. Jid told me that they work in isolation on the freighters and might see no one during a flight. And certainly not officers. Spacers are the anonymous jetsam of the galaxy. Or is it flotsam. I can never remember the difference.”
Stark, right hand clenched into a fist, looked as if she were about to start swinging again.
“Sooo,” said Bloom, prolonging the moment, “what if a fat Spacer were manifested as crew on a freighter but, after weigh-in at the spaceport, he swapped places and ID’s with a thin Spacer. I’ll bet Spacers are not isolated immediately after weighing. If a fat Spacer were left behind and a thin Spacer took his place, would anyone actually notice? And the difference between the mass of the fat and thin Spacers could be conveniently made up for with a comparable mass of contraband mineral. From the “flic theory” perspective, mass is mass.
“The particularly nice part of this scheme is that it relies on your security people being absolutely indifferent and contemptuous of Spacers. One Spacer is like any other to you guys. A Spacer shows up to board the ship with an ID, and your guys are happy. Certainly, nobody cares which Spacer is on the ship during flight.
“And what happens to the fat Spacer left behind? You know... like Grillo. All he has to do is stay out of sight until the freighter returns, and then he can come out of hiding. He’s now just a Spacer who has completed a successful run. The rooms behind the wall at the Union Hall would be a convenient place to wait for the return of the freighter. And the thin Spacer who was actually on the ship would hardly be missed back here; he was ‘sleeping it off’ somewhere on the planet during the voyage.
“By the way, an even easier smuggling method would be to manifest a corpse in a casket. Especially a nice heavy corpse filled with lead. The lead-weighted corpse would be used to calculate the ship’s mass, but if, after weighing, another body, a nice thin body, were substituted for the corpse, who would notice? I suspect you don’t secure corpses the way you do other manifested cargo. You Imperium types might carefully check cargo being shipped, but I doubt you’d recheck the mass of a closed casket. No need to hide the lead-filled corpse. Just leave it for the Hinas.”
“You are suggesting, Dr. Bloom,” said Stark, “that the Spacers can successfully smuggle by relying on the stupidity, arrogance and inattention of our security forces.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied Bloom. “That combined with a rather touching confidence that flic theory precludes unmonitored mass from being present in a starship.
“If I’m right, as you surely know I am, the simple solution to your problem is to monitor more closely the Spacers entering and leaving the ships in port and confirm they are the people who signed on. And, what the hell, check any corpses in transit.
“By the way, I’m pretty certain that only a few of the Spacers are in on the smuggling. Grillo, Jid, Sami and the group you picked up obviously were. It wouldn’t take many pairs of fat and thin Spacers to make a fortune, and the fewer who know, the better. Whatever other Spacers knew or suspected, they would never tell a Terran anything. Why should they? Nice racket.
“Now, I have no idea what ‘organization’ is involved in arranging for the movement of the mineral or in paying off the Spacers. So there’s still plenty of work for you guys. But you should be able to shut down the shipment on the freighters.”
“If you are right,” said Stark, “I’ll personally sign your exit visa.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Professor-Doctor Bloom, eying Stark attentively. “Before I leave, how about joining me for a glass of Quixel tonight. By the way, do you by chance ever wear green lipstick? I think you’d look good in green.”
Copyright © 2025 by Jeff Gaba
