McGinty's first love was Moon-shaped;
gutted and inhumanly beautiful. And it served
him well all the days of his short life.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I guess you could say I hated Kolomar. Not with the same hatred I hadfor the Comrades, but I hated him. There were the obvious reasons—he'dbeat me out of my general's star, and got the top job with Securitythat I'd been promised for the last five years. It was because of himthat I was still stuck with the command of a second-rate satellite.But there was an even more obvious reason, and it was the same oneeverybody else had.
Kolomar had the authority, both above and below the 120-mile limit,that went with being Director-General of the FBSI. He took that to meanhead cop, and judge and jury as well.
There are a lot of ways of handling authority.
You could be human. Or you could be like Kolomar. And if you were likehim, you never made any mistakes: you'd go to the end of the Universeif you had to, and when you wound up a case, the front office wouldalways have a gold star waiting for your report card. The only thinggood anybody else would have to say for you was that at least, you wereon the right side and not pitching on the Comrades' team.
He was towering over me now as I knelt in front of the wrecked safe;he couldn't have missed the look in my eyes, but it was like shootinga pistol at an atomic screen. I might as well have kept looking at thething in my hand that I'd just picked up off the deck.
He towered over me, that sour face of his hard as rock, and onlythe cold blue eyes showing that he was two jumps ahead of me; thathe understood all about the thing in my hand, and that I wasn't asinnocent about it as I was trying to make him think.
"Mark it Exhibit 1," he rattled, "and add the name of the man to whomit belongs."
I straightened up. I tossed the good luck piece to my desk; it was likeany ordinary good luck charm—a century-old 1900 50-cent piece—andunder the satellite's one-third G it just floated down to the desk toplike a leaf falling off a tree.
"How do I know whose it is?" I bluffed. "I'm boss of sixty men here,Kolomar. Besides the twenty that come up every week on the supplyshuttle. And they're a different twenty each time at that—"
He stared me straight down.
"How long have you been here, Colonel Kenton? Ten years, isn't it?"
I didn't answer him. He knew. He'd been a shuttle-lieutenant when I'dfirst arrived on the satellite. He had a brother who was floor leaderof the Senate. It was ten years later, and now he was Director-Generalof the Federal Bureau of Space Investigation. I was still a colonel. Mybrother was a schoolteacher.
"The crews here still have to sign contracts for five-year tricks.You've known two full crews, and whoever did this—" he turned hisclose-cropped head and nodded at the gaping Top Secret file in theblown safe "—is obviously a member of the crew you've got now. Youknow it; I know it. You've got a reputation, Kenton, for getting toknow your men. They say you know 'em as if they were your own brothersin six months' time."
He didn't bother making it a verbal accusation.
"I could only—I couldn't even make a bad guess as to whose it is, sir."
"You've got twenty-four hours to make a good one. I want him by 1700,Earth-Standard, tomorrow. That's an order."
Then he just turned around, the light of the cold cathodes glitteringoff his shoulder insignia and the silver trim on his black leatheritespace tunic, and le