Rude Astronauts by Allen Steele Read Free Book Online Page A

his head. “Yeah, but not hostile weird like that. Even Virgin Bruce wasn’t that twisted. Even the religious fanatics got the hint to shut up. Lenny the Red thought he was on a vital mission to save the world.” He grinned. “We used to have some fun with him, like the time Suffering Fred casually pulled out a copy of Das Kapital in the rec room and started reading it aloud. Blew Lenny’s mind. That’s one thing about fanatics, Al. No sense of humor whatsoever.”
    So Lenny the Red found himself ostracized. That made the situation even worse. Now Lenny Gibson began to suspect that the situation was even worse than George White had predicted; somehow, most of the Skycan beamjacks had been brainwashed, had become willing Commie dupes. How else could he explain this complete rejection of his claims?
    So Lenny the Red changed tactics. Instead of seeking converts, he began to make careful observations of the behavior of his fellow beamjacks, watchful for indications that a conspiracy was afoot. Lenny the preacher became Lenny the spy, the guy who sat quietly in the corner, listening, watching, waiting.
    “And sending coded messages,” Bob added. “The communications officers who worked in Command, y’know, handled the phone calls which crewmembers made to the folks back home. They sometimes listened in for kicks, and they used to tell us about these bizarre calls Lenny would make to some number in Baltimore. ‘Tell Aunt Jane to water the begonias. Repeat, tell Aunt Jane to water the begonias. The moon is red. How is Uncle George?’” Cowboy Bob chuckled “God knows what that shit meant, but it was obviously reports to the Casey Society.”
    “You didn’t get bothered by this?”
    “Naw. He was basically harmless.” Bob paused and sighed, his eyes rolling up toward the ceiling. “Until he caught the rumors about the Free Beer Conspiracy, though.”
    “Let me guess …”
    “Right. Commie plot.”
    There was little which could be kept secret for long aboard Olympus Station. The space station was enormous, but it was only so large; rumors and hearsay tended to spread quickly among the hundred-plus men and women living in the big wheel, sometimes but not always missing the attention of the security team or the station supervisor. In this instance, word seeped out that something special was being sent up to celebrate the completions of SPS-1. Yet only a small handful of people knew the details. If Phil Bigthorn, the US federal marshal who headed station security, or Hank Lutton, the station supervisor, had known what was going on, the jig would have been up; but apparently they didn’t, so the conspiracy continued to build itself.
    Eddie the Gentle Goon managed to make covert contact with one of the usual sources for goodies at the Cape, a cargo loader who for years had fattened his bank account by smuggling personal-request items into the OTVs bound for Skycan. (Cowboy Bob wouldn’t tell me his name, saying that the same person was still working for Skycan at KSC.) The cargo loader was willing to take the risk, which was considerable, but he also put a large fee on the job—fifty grand up front, overhead costs included. Eddie dickered with him and managed to get the price down to $30,000 through a combination of sweet talk and menace for which the Goon was renowned, and authorized a transfer of thirty grand from Eddie’s bank account to the loader’s. The price was still steep, but the co-conspirators grudgingly agreed to reimburse the Goon for the expense.
    The date for delivery of 444 cases of beer was to be on or before April 15, the day that final work on SPS-1 was scheduled to be completed. Dog-Boy and Dog-Girl, who had both worked previously as ground crew at the Cape, worked out the rough framework of the plan. They figured that, once the beer was packed into an OTV and the transfer vehicle was loaded into a shuttle’s cargo bay in the KSC Shuttle Processing Center, it would be smooth sailing. Under