World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

A mark piece rented him a lockerand he stowed his suit and jet pack inside, revealing himself as a scrawny giant with dark, curly hair and a mahogany tan confined strictly to his face and hands. He bought a paper coverall from a dispenser. Lit and Marda were among the several hundred Belters who did not become nudists in a shirtsleeve environment. It marked them as kooks, which was not a bad thing in the Belt.

The last door let him out behind the heat shield, still in free fall. A spring lift took him four miles down to where he could get a tricycle motor scooter. Even Belter couldn't keep a twowheeler upright against Confinement's shifting Coriolis force. The scooter took him down a steep gradient which leveled off into plowed fields, greenhouses, toiling farm machinery, woods streams and scattered cottages. In ten minutes he was home.

No, not really home. The cottage was rented from what there was of a Belt government. A Belter's home is the interior of his suit. But with Marda waiting in-side, dark and big-boned and just beginning to show her pregnancy, it felt like homecoming.

Then Lit remembered the coming fight. He hesitated a moment, consciously relaxing, before he rang.

The door disappeared, zzzip. They stood facing each other.

"Lit," said Marda, flatly, as if there was no surprise at all. Then, "There's a call for you."

"I'll take care of that first."

In the Belt as on Earth, privacy was rare and precious. The phone booth was a transparent prism, soundproof. Lit sneaked a last look at Marda before he answered the call. She looked both worried and determined.

"Hello, Cutter. What's new?"

"Hello, Lit. That's why I'm calling," said the duty man at Ceres. Cutter's voice was colorless as always. So was his appearance. Cutter would have looked appropriate dispensing tickets or stamps from behind a barred window. "Lars Stiller just called. One of the honeymoon specials to Titan just took off without calling us. Any comments?"

"Comments? Those stupid, bubbleheaded-" The traffic problem in space was far more than a matter of colliding spacecraft. No two spacecraft had ever collided, but men had died when their ships went through the exhaust of a fusion motor. Telescopic traffic checks, radio transmissions, rescue missions, star and asteroid observations could all be thrown out of whack by a jaywalker.

"That's what I said, Lit. What'll we do, turn 'em back?"

"Oh, Cutter, why don't you go to Earth and start your own government?" Lit rubbed his temples hard with both hands, rubbing away the tension. "Sorry. I shouldn't have said that.