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Read Ebook: Happy Rain Night by Evans Dean Freas Kelly Illustrator
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Ebook has 152 lines and 7685 words, and 4 pages
HAPPY RAIN NIGHT
It was the eve of the annual synthi-rain and all Mars was settling down for the big sleep that always went with it. Everything was ready, reso-skins had been peeled off the pumps a week before.
He eyed the wall clock inside his cubicle. Almost eleven. Might as well close up and go on home, there wouldn't be any more customers in tonight.
He suddenly decided to modify that thought as an old hull-weary job came banging clumsily down into cradle number one and slumped, little vibration tentacles rippling here and there over its surface. He sighed, went out the lock, went over to the cradle.
There was a woman in the ship. Not much of a woman, but you never knew what the big gambling city of Fraon would draw next in the line of tourists. All kinds.
Like this one. This one could be called typical. Wild black hair on the dame. Not long, but wild. A little sloppy, like the last-season's modo-strap she wore on the white skin between her breasts. The strap looked fringy.
"Fuel, Miss?" he asked.
But the woman didn't seem to hear. She was studying a small scanning disc, turning it this way and that like somebody pruning herself. Only not. She was giving the place the once over.
"Yeah," she said finally. "Yeah, but not the kind you think...." she stopped. She glared suddenly across the ramps at another jet--a Security Ship--that was coming in fast, settling for the cradle next to hers.
"No," she said. "No. Changed my mind. How far's Fraon from here?"
"You're on the edges now. Follow the bottom lane and drop when you see the lights. That be all?"
But the woman didn't answer. She yanked at controls inside the cabin and the old beat up jet rose with a tired, grumbling roar like the sigh of a very old man contemplating the long long years that have gone.
Ten minutes later she looked down, yanked once more on the controls. She'd almost overshot. The ship shuddered violently fore to aft and then jammed down inside the Administration Port.
She hunched her shoulders inside the plastiskin, let her eyes go up to a sucker sign off in the distance. She read:
CITY OF FRAON, GAMBLER'S PARADISE
And in smaller letters beneath:
COME CLEAN--GO AWAY THE SAME
She left the ship and made her way over to the Guide, a small niche of a place set into the corner of the now darkened Administration building. The Guide was open but it didn't look as though it was doing any business. She went inside.
There weren't any customers at all. The only person in the place was a young, greasy looking man, an attendant, who just now was looking bored and fingering a black pencil line mustache.
The greasy looking man raised his eyes. His finger left off caressing his mustache, and he studied the woman coming toward the desk. H'mm. Nice build. A little on the rough side, like something left out in the atmosphere too long, but all in all not too bad. Beggars can't be choosers. Not on Rain Night they can't. Not way out here on the edge of nothing at eleven in the evening when everybody's gone home, they can't.
He pushed the machine of buttons across the desk toward the woman. "Just in off the deserts?" he asked.
The woman tossed hair out of her eyes. She gave the greasy man a look. She eyed his mustache. She didn't say anything.
The greasy man grinned. Not hard to get, he thought, just a little careful. A little careful till she found out what he had to offer--generally speaking.
"Five more minutes before we close," he said, his grin changing to a leer. "You look a little lonely, sister. Me, I'm right there beside you yanking on the same controls. Look, it's Rain Night, sure, and most everything'll be closed in another hour but I know of a place ..." he left the rest unsaid. He raised an eyebrow significantly.
The woman didn't say anything. She dropped a teel credit into the slot on the control box, punched a button. Nothing happened. Then the teel came rattling back at her through the reject. She looked up.
"Something?" the greasy man said.
"Yeah. I punch the button for a room and all that happens is my money coming back."
"A room?" He looked incredulous. "On Rain Night? Don't be absurd, sister. All taken days ago. Might try the 'Coptels. They might have a vacancy. But why worry about that? Like I said...."
He leaned over the counter, leaned over toward the woman. Leaned right into a heat gun that had appeared like old-time magic in the woman's right hand.
"Hey!"
"You're the soul of Martian generosity," the woman said evenly. "On you it sprouts ears. I could see that eight lanes up. Open the bank, I need a fistful of credits."
"Huh?"
"Open the bank."
He was getting to believe it. And not liking it. He glared at the woman, then glared down at the heat gun in her hand. He growled indignantly:
"Why you lousy space tramp, I oughta...."
"Hold it!" Something hard was in the woman's voice.
But he didn't hold it. His hand went out darting, and his fingers clutched for the alarm buttons on the bank. And they almost made it, those fingers of his. They came within a thought-space of making it.
But didn't, actually.
The heat gun made a funny sound like a tiny jet biting at solid atmosphere. The greasy man's hand stayed for an instant, his fingers playing little chords of agony in the air.
Somebody like him. After that his body folded forward and his head came down over the machine. His mustache, somehow, didn't look so very good now.
The woman went around the counter, punched the control buttons on the rear of the bank. At once two compartments came out and she looked down into a mess of teel credits that would choke a moon crater. She frowned. Then she transferred the platinum teels to the big pocket in her plastiskin, closed the compartments, went around to the front of the desk again, and looked down at the buttons.
She dropped a teel in the slot and touched the 'Coptel button. The greasy man had been right, there were some left. From the side of the machine came her reservation identity key.
She had a last word for the greasy man: "Happy Rain Night, Buster."
She went out of the place, went back to her ship, dropped the identity key in a small slot on the instrument panel and closed the control lever. From here on the 'Coptel would do the directing and controlling of the weary ship. She leaned back, felt at the bulging pocket in her plastiskin.
The 'Coptel court was empty. Cold winds just in off the deserts swept little memories of sand around, flicking at 'Coptel walls with a dry, brittle sound. The woman left her ship, went through the 'Coptel lock, dumped the bag she'd taken with her from the ship onto the bed. She looked around. Then sniffed softly. It didn't matter what the place looked like, she wouldn't be here long enough to notice.
She showered, and for the next ten minutes worked hard on her hair. After that she went to the bag over on the bed and took from it a new plastiskin with a gleaming, golden-colored modo-strap. She pulled it over very white thighs, struggled her arms in. All that remained was to transfer the teel credits and the gun. After that she went out to the ship and set the controls for take-off in fifteen minutes.
Going down the 'Coptel ramp to the spacelators she chuckled softly to herself. The ship would go up to the eighth lane and stay there. She wondered what the Security people would think when they found it up there with nobody in it.
That black-haired woman over by the quarter-teel machines for instance. The one with the cheap new plastiskin with the phony golden modo-strap on it. Take her. Ten to one she worked somewhere in a mining office and managed to put away, by great sacrifice, a little something from her salary each week.
Ten to one she'd done this for a year just so she could come up here to Fraon and have herself a whirl in the gaming houses for one or two days. How do you like that? And ten to one she'd go home broke as hell and go back to the slaving routine some more. Unless, of course, she could discover for herself some other less laborious way of making a fast teel.
Not a bad looking woman, either, he thought. There was something--some tiny little thing--about her that puzzled him, but he couldn't put his finger on it. He watched her play the machines, watched her as she scanned the place with dark eyes that missed about as much as the teel-collector on tax day. Odd. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to the machines she was playing, she seemed more interested in the motley crowd in the place.
Oh, well. Just another woman. Another twenty minutes and they'd be closing up and he could go home for the big sleep everybody enjoyed during the synthi-rain. He spun his wheel idly and looked away.
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