All this happened under the sardonic gaze of Glen Tiflin, and before the puzzled eyes of Joe Kuzak and Two-and-Two Baines. A dozen others were hovering near.

Nelsen lowered his voice and called, "Nance?"

She answered at once. "I'm all right, Frank. A few people to patch. Some beyond that. I'm in the hospital with Doc Forbes..."

"You guys can find something useful to do," Nelsen snapped at the gathering crowd.

"Well, Frankie," Tiflin taunted. "Aren't you going to invite me into your fancy new quarters? Joe and Two-and-Two also look as though they could stand a drink."

On the sundeck, Tiflin spoke again. "I suppose you've got it figured, Nelsen?"

Nelsen answered him in clipped fashion. "Thanks. But let's not dawdle too much. I've got a lot of wreckage to put back together... Maybe I've still got it figured wrong, Tiflin. But lately I began to think the other way. You were always around when trouble was cooking—like part of it, or like a good cop. The first might still be right."

Tiflin sneered genially. "Some cops can't carry badges. And they don't always stop trouble, but they try... Anyhow, what side do you think I was on, after Fessler kicked me around for months...? Let Igor go. He's got law and order in his soul. I kind of like having him around... But keep your mouths buttoned, will you? I'm talking to you, Mr. Baines, and you, Mr. Kuzak, as well as to you, Nelsen. And I'm take my bubb along, the same as the other ninety or so guys who are left from Parnay's crowd. I've got to look good with them... Cheers, you slobs. See you around..."

Afterwards, Joe growled, "Hell—what do you know! Him...! Special Police. Undercover. U.N., U.S., or what?"

"Shut up," Nelsen growled.

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. It was part of the complicated paradox of human nature. And it was hard to visualize a time when there wouldn't be followers—frustrated slobs who wanted to get out and kick over the universe. Nelsen had felt such urges cropping up within himself. So this wasn't the end of trouble—especially not out here in raw space, that was still far too big for man-made order.

So it wasn't just the two, opposed space navies patrolling, more quietly now, between Ceres and Pallas. That condition could pass. The way people always chose—or were born to—different sides was another matter. Or was it just the natural competition of life in whatever form? More disturbing, perhaps, was the mere fact of trying to live here, so close to natural forces that could kill in an instant.

For example, Nelsen often saw two children and a dog racing around inside one of the rotating bubbs—having fun as if just in a back yard. If the stellene were ripped, the happy picture would change to horror... How long would it take to get adjusted to—and accept—such a chance? Thoughts like that began to disturb Nelsen. Out here, in all this enormous freedom, the shift from peaceful routine to tragedy could be quicker than ever before.

But is wasn't thinking about such grim matters that actually threw Frank Nelsen—that got him truly mixed up. In Parnay's attack, ten men and two women had been killed. There were also twenty-seven injured. Such facts he could accept—they didn't disturb him too much, either. Yet there was a curious sort of straw that broke the camel's back, one might have said.

The incident took place quite a while after the assault. Out on an inspection tour in his Archer, he happened to glance through the transparent wall of the sundeck of a prefab he was passing...

In a moment he was inside, grinning happily. Miss Rosalie Parks was lecturing him: "... You needn't be surprised that I am here, Franklin. 'O, tempora O, mores!' Cicero once said. 'O, the times! O, the customs!' But we needn't be so pessimistic. I am in perfect health—and ten years below retirement age. Young people, I suspect, will still be taught Latin if they choose... Or there will be something else... Of course I had heard of your project... It was quite easy for you not to notice my arrival. But I came with the latest group, straight from Earth..."

Nelsen was very pleased that Miss Parks was here. He told her so. He stayed for cakes and coffee. He told her that it was quite right for her to keep up with the times. He believed this, himself...

Afterwards, though, in his own quarters, he began to laugh. Her presence was so incongruous, so fantastic...

His laughter became wild. Then it changed to great rasping hiccups. Too much that was unbelievable by old standards had happened around him. This was delayed reaction to space. He had heard of such a thing. But he had hardly thought that it could apply to him, anymore...! Well, he knew what to do... Tranquilizer tablets were practically forgotten things to him. But he gulped one now. In a few minutes, he seemed okay, again...

Yet he couldn't help thinking back to the Bunch, the Planet Strappers. To the wild fulfillment they had sought... So—most of them had made it. They had become men—the hard way. Except, of course, Eileen—the distaff side... They had planned, callowly, to meet and compare adventures in ten years. And this was still less than seven...

How long had it been since he had even beamed old Paul, in Jarviston...? Now that most of the Syrtis Fever had left him, it seemed futile even to consider such a thing. It involved memories buried in enormous time, distance, change, and unexpectedness.

Glen Tiflin—the sour, space-wild punk who had become a cop. Had Tiflin even saved his—Frank Nelsen's—life, once, long ago, persuading a Jolly Lad leader to cast him adrift for a joke, rather than to kill him and Ramos outright...?

Charlie Reynolds—the Bunch-member whom everybody had thought most likely to succeed. Well, Charlie was dead from a simple thing, and buried on Venus. He was unknown—except to his acquaintances.

Jig Hollins, the guy who had played it safe, was just as dead.

Eileen Sands was a celebrity in Serene, in Pallastown and the whole Belt.

Mex Ramos—of the flapping squirrel tails on an old motor scooter—now belonged to the history of exploration, though he no longer had real hands or feet, and, very likely, was now dead, somewhere out toward interstellar space.

David Lester, the timid one, had become successful in his own way, and was the father of one of the first children to be born in the Belt.

Two-and-Two Baines had won enough self-confidence to make cracks about the future. Gimp Hines, once the saddest case in the Whole Bunch, had been, for a long time, perhaps the best adjusted to the Big Vacuum.

Art Kuzak, one-time hunkie football player, was a power among the asteroids. His brother, Joe, had scarcely changed, personally.

About himself, Nelsen got the most lost. What had he become, after his wrong guesses and his great luck, and the fact that he had managed to see more than most? Generally, he figured that he was still the same free-wheeling vagabond by intention, but too serious to quite make it work out. Sometimes he actually gave people orders. It came to him as a surprise that he must be almost as rich as old J. John Reynolds, who was still drawing wealth from a comparatively small loan—futilely at his age, unless he had really aimed at the ideal of bettering the future.

Nelsen's busy mind couldn't stop. He thought of three other-world cultures he had glimpsed. Two had destroyed each other. The third and strangest was still to be reckoned with...

There, he came to Mitch Storey, the colored guy with the romantic name. Of all the Planet Strappers, his history was the most fabulous. Maybe, now, with a way of living in open space started, and with the planets ultimately to serve only as sources of materials, Mitch's star people would be left in relative peace for centuries.

Frank Nelsen began to chuckle again. As if something, everything, was funny. Which, perhaps, it was in a way. Because the whole view, personal and otherwise, seemed too huge and unpredictable for his wits to grasp. It was as if neither he, nor any other person, belonged where he was at all. He checked his thoughts in time. Otherwise, he would have commenced hiccuping.

That was the way it went for a considerable succession of arbitrary twenty-four hour day-periods. As long as he kept his attention on the tasks in hand, he was okay—he felt fine. Still, the project was proceeding almost automatically, just now. The first cluster of prefabs had grown until it had been split into halves, which moved a million miles apart, circling the sun. And he knew that there were other clusters, built by other outfits, growing and dividing into widely separated portions of the same great ring-like zone.

Maybe the old problems were beat. Safety? If deployment was the answer to that, it was certainly there—to a degree, at least. Room enough? Check. It was certainly available. Freedom of mind and action? There wasn't much question that that would work out, too. Home, comfort, and a kind of life not too unfamiliar? In the light of detached logic and observation, that was going fine, too. In the main, people were adjusting very quickly and eagerly. Perhaps too quickly.

That was where Nelsen always got scared, as if he had become a nervous old man. The Big Vacuum had a grandeur. It could seem gentle. Could children, women and men—everybody sometimes forgot—learn to live with it without losing their respect for it, until suddenly it killed them?

That was the worst point, if he let himself think. And how could he always avoid that? From there his thoughts would branch out into his multiple uncertainties, confusions and puzzlements. Then those strangling hiccups would come. And who could be taking devil-killers all the time?

He hadn't avoided Nance Codiss. He talked with her every day, lunched with her, even held her hand. Otherwise, a restraint had come over him. Because something was all wrong with him, and was getting worse. Just one urge was clear, now, inside him. She knew, of course, that he was loused up; but she didn't say anything. Finally he told her.

"You were right, Nance. I was fumbling my way, too. Space fatigue, the medic told me just a little while ago. He agrees with me that I should go back to Earth. I've got to go—to take a look at everything from the small end, again. Of course I've always had the longing. And now I can go. It has been a year since the worst of the Syrtis Fever."

"I've had the fever. And sometimes the longing, Frank," she said after she had studied him for a moment. "I think I'd like to go."

"Only if you want to, Nance. It's me that's flunking out, pal." He chuckled apologetically, almost lightly. "My part has to be a one-person deal. I don't know whether I'll ever come back. And you seem to fit, out here."

She looked at him coolly for almost a minute. "All right, Frank," she said quietly. "Follow your nose. It's just liable to be right on the beam—for you. I might follow mine. I don't know."

"Joe and Two-and-Two are around—if you need anything, Nance," he said. "I'll tell them. Gimp, I hear, is on the way. Not much point in my waiting for him, though..."

Somehow he loved Nance Codiss as much or more than ever. But how could he tell her that and make sense? Not much made sense to him anymore. It seemed that he had to get away from everybody that he had ever seen in space.

Fifty hours before his departure with a returning bubb caravan that had brought more Earth-emigrants, Nelsen acquired a travelling companion who had arrived from Pallastown with a small caravan bringing machinery. The passenger-hostess brought him to Nelsen's prefab. He was a grave little guy, five years old. He was solemn, polite, frightened, tall for his age—funny how corn and kids grew at almost zero-gravity.

The boy handed Nelsen a letter. "From my father and mother, sir," he said.

Nelsen read the typed missive.

"Dear Frank: The rumor has come that you are going home. You have our very best wishes, as always. Our son, Davy, is being sent to his paternal grandmother, now living in Minneapolis. He will go to school there. He is capable of making the trip without any special attention. But—a small imposition. If you can manage it, please look in on him once in a while, on the way. We would appreciate this favor. Thank you, take care of yourself, and we shall hope to see you somewhere within the next few months. Your sincere friends, David and Helen Lester."

A lot of nerve, Nelsen thought first. But he tried to grin engagingly at the kid and almost succeeded.

"We're in luck, Dave," he said. "I'm going to Minneapolis, too. I'm afraid of a lot of things. What are you afraid of?"

The small fry's jutting lip trembled. "Earth," he said. "A great big planet. Hoppers tell me I won't even be able to stand up or breathe."

Nelsen very nearly laughed and went into hiccups, again. Fantastic. Another viewpoint. Seeing through the other end of the telescope. But how else would it be for a youngster born in the Belt, while being sent—in the old colonial pattern—to the place that his parents regarded as home?

"Those jokers," Nelsen scoffed. "They're pulling your leg! It just isn't so, Davy. Anyhow, during the trip, the big bubb will be spun fast enough, so that we will get used to the greater Earth-gravity. Let me tell you something. I guess it's space and the Belt that I'm afraid of. I never quite got over it. Silly, huh?"

But as Nelsen watched the kid brighten, he remembered that he, himself, had been scared of Earth, too. Scared to return, to show weakness, to lack pride... Well, to hell with that. He had accomplished enough, now, maybe, to cancel such objections. Now it seemed that he had to get to Earth before it vanished because of something he had helped start. Silly, of course...

He and Davy travelled fast and almost in luxury. Within two weeks they were in orbit around the bulk of the Old World. Then, in the powerful tender with its nuclear retard rockets, there was the Blast In—the reverse of that costly agony that had once meant hard won and enormous freedom, when he was poor in money and rich in mighty yearning. But now Nelsen yielded in all to the mother clutch of the gravity. The whole process had been gentled and improved. There were special anti-knock seats. 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.

Seeking the shelter of anonymity, he bought a rucksack for his few clothes, and boarded a bus which dropped him at Jarviston, Minnesota, at two a.m. He thrust his hands into his pockets, partly like a lonesome tramp, partly like some carefree immortal, and partly like a mixed-up wraith who didn't quite know who or what he was, or where he belonged.

In his wallet he had about five hundred dollars. How much more he might have commanded, he couldn't even guess. Wups, fella, he told himself. That's too weird, too indigestible—don't start hiccuping again. How old are you—twenty-five, or twenty-five thousand years? Wups—careful...

The full Moon was past zenith, looking much as it always had. The blue-tinted air domes of colossal industrial development, were mostly too small at this distance to be seen without a glass. Good...

With wondering absorption he sniffed the mingling of ripe field and road smells, borne on the warm breeze of the late-August night. Some few cars evidently still ran on gasoline. For a moment he watched neon signs blink. In the desertion he walked past Lehman's Drug Store and Otto Kramer's bar, and crossed over to pause for a nameless moment in front of Paul Hendricks' Hobby Center, which was all dark, and seemed little changed. He took to a side street, and won back the rustle of trees and the click of his heels in the silence.

A few more buildings—that was about all that was visibly different in Jarviston, Minnesota.

A young cop eyed him as he returned to the main drag and paused near a street lamp. He had a flash of panic, thinking that the cop was somebody, grown up, now, who would recognize him. But at least it was no one that he remembered.

The cop grinned. "Get settled in a hotel, buddy," he said. "Or else move on, out of town."

Nelsen grinned back, and ambled out to the highway, where intermittent clumps of traffic whispered.

There he paused, and looked up at the sky, again. The electric beacon of a weather observation satellite blinked on and off, moving slowly. Venus had long since set, with hard-to-see Mercury preceding it. Jupiter glowed in the south. Mars looked as remote and changeless as it must have looked in the Stone Age. The asteroids were never even visible here without a telescope.

The people that he knew, and the events that he had experienced Out There, were like myths, now. How could he ever put Here and There together, and unite the mismatched halves of himself and his experience? He had been born on Earth, the single home of his kind from the beginning. How could he ever even have been Out There?

He didn't try to hitch a ride. He walked fourteen miles to the next town, bought a small tent, provisions and a special, miniaturized radio. Then he slipped into the woods, along Hickman's Lake, where he used to go.

There he camped, through September, and deep into October. He fished, he swam again. He dropped stones into the water, and watched the circles form, with a kind of puzzled groping in his memory. He retreated from the staggering magnificence of his recent past and clutched at old simplicities.

On those rare occasions when he shaved, he saw the confused sickness in his face, reflected by his mirror. Sometimes, for a moment, he felt hot, and then cold, as if his blood still held a tiny trace of Syrtis Fever. If there was such a thing? No—don't start to laugh, he warned himself. Relax. Let the phantoms fade away. Somewhere, that multiple bigness of Nothing, of life and death, of success and unfairness and surprise, must have reality—but not here...

Occasionally he listened to news on the radio. But mostly he shut it off—out. Until boredom at last began to overtake him—because he had been used to so much more than what was here. Until—specifically—one morning, when the news came too quickly, and with too much impact. It was a recording, scratchy, and full of unthinkable distance.

"... Frank, Gimp, Two-and-Two, Paul, Mr. Reynolds, Otto, Les, Joe, Art, everybody—especially you, Eileen—remember what you promised, when I get back, Eileen...! Here I am, on Pluto—edge of the star desert! Clear sailing—all the way. All I see, yet, is twilight, rocks, mountains, snow which must be frozen atmosphere—and one big star, Sol. But I'll get the data, and be back..."

Nelsen listened to the end, with panic in his face—as if such adventures and such living were too gigantic and too rich... He hiccuped once. Then he held himself very still and concentrated. He had known that voice Out There and Here, too. Now, as he heard it again—Here, but from Out There—it became like a joining force to bring them both together within himself. Though how could it be...?

"Ramos," he said aloud. "Made it... Another good guy, accomplishing what he wanted... Hey...! Hey, that's swell... Like things should happen."

He didn't hiccup anymore, or laugh. By being very careful, he just grinned, instead. He arose to his feet, slowly.

"What am I doing here—wasting time?" he seemed to ask the woods.

Without picking up his camping gear at all, he headed for the road, thumbed a ride to Jarviston, where he arrived before eight o'clock. Somebody had started ringing the city hall bell. Celebration?

Hendricks' was the most logical place for Nelsen to go, but he passed it by, following a hunch to his old street. She had almost said that she might come home, too. He touched the buzzer.

Not looking too completely dishevelled himself, he stood there, as a girl—briskly early in dress and impulse, so as not to waste the bright morning—opened the door.

"Yeah, Nance—me," he croaked apologetically. "Ramos has reached Pluto!"

"I know, Frankie!" she burst out.

But his words rushed on. "I've been goofing off—by Hickman's Lake. Over now. Emotional indigestion, I guess—from living too big, before I could take it. I figured you might be here. If you weren't, I'd come... Because I know where I belong. Nance—I hope you're not angry. Maybe we're pulling together, at last?"

"Angry—when I was the first fumbler? How could that be, Frank? Oh, I knew where you were—folks found out. I told them to leave you alone, because I understood some of what you were digging through. Because it was a little the same—for me... So, you see, I didn't just tag after you." She laughed a little. "That wouldn't be proud, would it? Even though Joe and Two-and-Two said I had to go bring you back..."

His arms went tight around her, right there on the old porch. "Nance—love you," he whispered. "And we've got to be tough. Everybody's got to be tough—to match what we've come to. Even little kids. But it was always like that—on any kind of frontier, wasn't it? A few will get killed, but more will live—many more..."

Like that, Frank Nelsen shook the last of the cobwebs out of his brain—and got back to his greater destiny.

"I'll buy all of that philosophy," Nance chuckled gently. "But you still look as though you needed some breakfast, Frank."

He grinned. "Later. Let's go to see Paul, first. A big day for him—because of Ramos. Paul is getting feeble, I suppose?" Nelsen's face had sobered.

"Not so you could notice it much, Frank," Nance answered. "There's a new therapy—another side of What's Coming, I guess..."

They walked the few blocks. The owner of the Hobby Center was now a long-time member of KRNH Enterprises. He had the means to expand and modernize the place beyond recognition. But clearly he had realized that some things should not change.

In the display window, however, there gleamed a brand-new Archer Nine, beautiful as a garden or a town floating, unsupported, under the stars—beautiful as the Future, which was born of the Past.

A Bunch of fellas—the current crop of aficionados—were inside the store, making lots of noise over the news. Was that Chip Potter, grown tall? Was that his same old dog, Blaster? Frank Nelsen could see Paul Hendricks' white-fringed bald-spot.

"Go ahead—open the door. Or are you still scared?" Nance challenged lightly.

"No—just anticipating," Nelsen gruffed. "And seeing if I can remember what's Out There ... Serene, bubb, Belt, Pallas..." He spoke the words like comic incantations, yet with a dash of reverence.

"Superbia?" Nance teased.

"That is somebody's impertinent joke!" he growled in feigned solemnity. "Anyhow, it would be too bad if something that important couldn't take a little ribbing. Shucks—we've hardly started to work, yet!"

He drew Nance back a pace, out of sight of those in the store, and kissed her long and rather savagely.

"With all its super-complications, life still seems pretty nice," he commented.

The door squeaked, just as it used to, as Nelsen pushed it open. The old overhead bell jangled.

Pale, watery eyes lifted and lighted with another fulfilment.

"Well, Frank! Long time no see...!"



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THE PLANET STRAPPERS

started out as The Bunch, a group of student-astronauts in the back room of a store in Jarviston, Minnesota. They wanted off Earth, and they begged, borrowed and built what they needed to make it.

THE PLANET STRAPPERS got what they wanted—a start on the road to the stars—but no one brought up on Earth could have imagined what was waiting for them Out There!

In THE PLANET STRAPPERS, Ray Gallun has written a story of the Day After Tomorrow—a story of what it will be like for the men who cross the space frontier—a story that some of us will be *living* some day....

A PYRAMID BOOK 35c

COVER: JOHN SCHOENHERR

Printed in U.S.A.



Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors in the original text have been corrected in this eBook:

Page 18: "signficant" changed to "significant"

Page 43: single quotation mark changed to a double quotation mark

Page 69: "re-leatch" changed to "re-latch"

Page 70: "in" changed to "an"

Page 72: "Casseopia" changed to "Cassiopeia"

Page 73: "sitch" changed to "switch"

Page 75: "dopy" changed to "dopey"

Page 77: "thundrous" changed to "thunderous"

Page 78: missing quotation mark added; "dissappeared" changed to "disappeared"; "a" changed to "at"; "Were" changed to "We're"

Page 81: "Kuzack" changed to "Kuzak"

Page 85: "stear" changed to "steer"

Page 89: "Kuzaks" changed to "Kuzaks'"

Page 92: "asteriods" changed to "asteroids"

Page 104: missing quotation mark added; "summersaults" changed to "somersaults"

Page 107: "heathy" changed to "healthy"

Page 113: "asteriod-hoppers" changed to "asteroid-hoppers"

Page 115: "prismastic" changed to "prismatic"

Page 121: "guage" changed to "gauge"

Page 124: "exhude" changed to "exude"

Page 132: extra quotation mark removed

Page 137: "assteroid-hoppers" changed to "asteroid-hoppers"; "advertized" changed to "advertised"

Page 143: "milleniums" changed to "millenniums"

Page 145: "quandrant" changed to "quadrant"

Page 158: "fantasty" changed to "fantasy"

THE END