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The farthest he'd ever been from the surface of Mars was the upper support beams of the farm domes, when repairs needed doing, and he was about to go a whole lot farther.
John Bigman Jones looked out the window of the commercial space-liner at the surface of Mars stretching below and off to the horizon. As the rocket lifted upwards and the surface fell away, a pang of emotion went through his chest. It wasn’t regret, and he hadn’t been gone long enough to feel homesick; it was a kind of wistfulness. Soon enough, Mars would be just another bright fleck in the sky, like Earth and the Moon was at night-time.
He wouldn’t be a stranger to the gravity, at least, considering the farm domes and Wingrad City were kept at Earth normal through pseudo-grav, but Bigman couldn’t imagine going outside without a nosepiece or any other protective gear-- just breathing plain old air under the sky. He almost shuddered, then decided to lean back in his seat.
He cast a glance to his left, and saw David Starr in serene repose as the acceleration built up to send them aloft into the sky. As if he’d sensed Bigman’s line of sight, David cracked one eyelid open and peered sideways at him.
“What’s the matter, Bigman? Nervous? It’s a little late for second thoughts,” David jibed, smiling and clapping him on the shoulder.
“Second thoughts, my left boot! I volunteered, didn’t I? I said I was going with you and I meant it!” Bigman protested.
David chuckled at that. “All right, all right.” He settled back into his chair and shut his eyes again, showing utter unconcern with the rise into space.
Well, I’ll be damned if I let the Earthie be calmer than me on a space trip, Bigman decided, and feeling the push backwards, he too closed his eyes, refusing to let anything but firm anticipation remain.
Chief Councilman Hector Conway and his best friend as well as unofficial second-in-command, Councilman Augustus Henree, stood at the spaceport in International City, watching through the tall glass window that stretched off to their left and right, giving them a wide view of the entire spaceport. Their eyes were currently fastened to the rocket easing slowly downward through the atmosphere, its powerful hyperatomics crescendoing to a final roar before powering off as the rocket touched the ground.
They had received only the tersest of hyperwave messages in the aftermath of cracking the mystery of the Mars food poisonings; they had Silvers’s report, of course, along with David’s, but those only detailed the actual circumstances surrounding the arrest and mop-up of Dr. Benson’s adjutant Hennes and the rest of that small gang. Conway, in particular, hoped he’d soon have a longer talk with his son in all but name.
It was an anxious wait of several minutes while the ground crew bustled about, securing the rocket and preparing for its passengers to disembark. Conway and Henree were waiting inside the comfortable, air-conditioned terminal, eyeing the gateway from which the passengers would soon emerge-- although not nearly soon enough for the tense Councilman’s liking!
Finally, the gate slid open and people streamed out, hurrying off in all directions. Henree, standing next to Conway, swayed this way and that as he strained to spot their all-but-officially adopted charge. At last, a mop of familiar brown hair appeared in the crowd-- at the boy’s considerable height, it wasn’t hard to spot him amongst the other travellers. David Starr emerged into sight, and he was chatting amiably with a short, red-haired man at his side, sporting a painfully colorful pair of hip-boots as was the fashion among Martian farmhands. Or rather, the red-haired man chattered animatedly while David smiled and nodded along. Conway chuckled; it didn’t surprise him that David would have befriended a fellow traveller en route. Lawrence had been the same way, with his ease in getting to know people.
What did surprise him was when David, spotting them, came hurrying over-- and the short fellow immediately and without a second’s hesitation came with him. Conway’s smile morphed into something a little less indulgent and a little more puzzled. Henree reached up to take the pipe out of his mouth and pursed his lips, eyebrows raising slightly. David had at least a few friends outside the Council but he rarely, if ever, had them meet his uncles.
So who, they wondered, could this gentleman be?
“Uncle Hector! Uncle Gus!” David exclaimed, approaching them with arms opened. “You came to meet me at the gates, did you?”
“Where else would we be?” Gus broke out in a smile and reached out to wring David’s hand effusively, Conway following up with a similarly almost bone-crushing handshake and a short embrace.
“It is good to have you back. But David,” wondered Conway, “who’s your friend?”
“Ah!” David stepped back and held his arm out to the side, as if displaying his companion. “This is John Bigman Jones of Mars; he helped me crack the food poisonings.”
The short man straightened his back, shoulders squared. “Call me Bigman!” he proclaimed, then hesitated and added, “I mean, if you please, Chief Councilman… sir.”
“I… see,” Conway said, although he very much didn’t. Tentatively, he reached out and shook hands with the new arrival, as did Gus. Turning back to David, he said, “Well, shall we return to Science Tower? We have much to discuss, my boy.”
“Indeed we do,” David said solemnly.
“And what about you, Mr. Bigman? If you’re looking to get settled in on Earth, there’s an office at the other end of the terminal--”
“What are you talking about? I’m going with Mr. Starr, of course!” Bigman insisted. “And it’s just Bigman.”
Conway shot a quick glance at David, who seemed not remotely surprised by this exclamation. Well, now he was well and truly confused. Gus, seeing Conway’s momentary distress, gestured to the exit and said, “Well, how about we get out of this crowd, at least? Science Tower awaits us, gentlemen.”
It wasn’t far from the spaceport to Science Tower. A short ground-car ride was all it took, during which time David’s newly-acquired Martian companion gazed in amazement out the window at the unfamiliar sights of a world without airtight domes.
And now, Conway found himself sitting, along with Henree, at one side of a sleek metal desk. Across from them sat one John Bigman Jones, Martian farmboy and new arrival to Earth-- newly arrived, as it happened, in the company of their youngest Councilman, their pseudo-adopted charge, and the Council’s brightest and fastest-rising star, whose name was coincidentally David Starr.
This was not an interrogation, nor an inquisition. Henree had been very clear to David and his friend on that point. But it was a debrief of sorts, and it needed to happen, because David’s triumphant return from Mars had brought even more surprises: David Starr, so very like his irrepressible father, had gotten it into his head that they should give this particular Martian farmboy a security clearance.
This was, of course, no small feat that David was asking of Conway. Getting a security clearance for even a qualified Councilman at the start of their career had quite the process behind it. Approving a non-Councilman, someone with little scientific experience, at that? Even so, David was adamant that he needed this specific Martian farmboy along with him on whatever his next assignment would be, and apparently on each and every assignment thereafter, and Conway was a softer touch than he cared to admit. Perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that he’d scarcely seen David at all in several years; perhaps he felt he had some lost time to make up for.
Either way, here they were. Conway studied Bigman with no small amount of consternation. Bigman, for his part, sat with his arms crossed over his narrow chest. His posture appeared nonchalant, but his eyes were wide open, his mouth pressed into a thin line.
Clearing his throat, Conway sat forward and placed his hands on the desk. “Now, what exactly do you mean, ‘asking for trouble’?”
“It’s just like I said,” Bigman insisted. “Mr. Starr’s a smart one, all right, but you can’t send a green Earthie like that undercover on a Martian farm! It’s a good thing I found him or he’d have been ripped to bits! That cobber Griswold nearly had him dead within a week!” He paused, then swallowed thickly and added, “Uh, that is… Councilman, sir.”
Conway huffed and shot a harried glance at Henree, who chewed his pipe and shrugged.
Gaining steam at the lack of rebuke, Bigman pressed on. “You could’ve had him read up on how things are on Martian farms! Or at least talk to your local people first before barging into a job-placement agency and throwing fists on the first day.”
“He wasn’t supposed to be on Mars in the first place,” Conway grumbled. “His official assignment was to go to the Moon and speak to the Central Laboratories.”
Bigman slapped his boots and laughed. “That sounds like Mr. Starr, all right!”
In an aside to Conway, Henree muttered, “He has a point, Hector. You said it yourself; you knew David would head straight for Mars, and that the business with the Central Labs was a smokescreen. We should have at least provisioned him with some reading material on Martian farms, if only under the guise of preparing him for possible negotiations with Syndicate operations owners.”
Conway huffed at that. Henree, turning to Bigman, said, “You said you ‘found’ David, would you care to elaborate on that?”
“Certainly, certainly!” Bigman said loftily. “It was in the Farm Employment office that I spotted him. Now, I didn’t make much of him at first-- soft, green Earthies come to Mars all the time, see, and I didn’t figure him to be much different. But then he gave old Griswold a run for his money and I figured he wasn’t too bad, for an Earthie.”
“A generous assessment,” Conway said dryly, under his breath.
Bigman seemed to neither notice nor care, going on with a wave of his hand. “So, when they brought us both to Makian’s farm, I got it into my head I’d look after him-- keep an eye on him, you know? Good thing, too, Griswold had just about set him up for a plunge over the edge.”
“Edge?” Conway echoed.
“Of a fissure, Chief Councilman.” Bigman traced an arc downwards through the air with one fingertip and a descending whistle. “He’s quick, though, that Mr. Starr, he’s a quick one.”
“Can you tell us more about the fissure incident?” wondered Henree.
“Sure. Sand-cars on Mars need weight-rods outside the domes. Otherwise they’re just too light and they bounce around everywhere, and that’s what happened to Mr. Starr’s. Griswold had one of his boys ‘forget’ to tell Starr to put the weight-rods on his sand-car. My guess is, he figured Mr. Starr would take a turn too fast, crash his car somewhere, and the whole thing would just be a big ‘sad accident’. And that’s what I mean by Griswold nearly set him up for that plunge.
“But I said Mr. Starr was quick. He figured out the emergency brakes quickly enough and stood up to Griswold - cottoned on pretty quick that we might settle things with fists on Mars, but we do it fairly. Sure enough, Griswold got a taste of his own medicine and the dumb cobber just went blind over the fissure himself.” Bigman crossed his arms, letting a small look of satisfaction cross his features.
Conway’s eyebrows went up at that. How close had David been to death during his mission? He almost raised his eyes towards the ceiling in expostulation to Lawrence’s spirit, but held his gaze steady at Bigman. “When did you find out he was incognito?”
Bigman smirked. “We’re not complete idiots on Mars; we get newsreels and some of the higher-ups at Makian’s even have their own personal hyperwave sets, and of course we’ve got the communal hyperwave at the cafeteria. They don’t talk a lot about you guys, but I happened to catch Starr’s face a time or two: newest Councilman, youngest ever, son of some big-shot, and all that. I didn’t think anything of it until I kept wondering why I kind of recognized him. It all came together when he told me to go to the Council of Science library in Wingrad City.”
“How do you even know that’s one of our Mars branch locations, Mr. Jones?” Conway let a note of sternness enter his voice. The Council wasn’t totally secret, but they couldn’t afford excessive publicity and their people on Mars were particularly conscious of the relative lack of social distinctions on that planet.
“Why, I grew up in Wingrad City,” Bigman scoffed. “You don’t grow up in a Martian city without knowing just about every corner of it. They’re not small, but they’re not exactly endless! As soon as Mr. Starr asked me to go gather some materials from the library at the corner of Canal and Phobos, I remembered those video reels and I knew exactly who he was.”
Henree chuckled. “I suppose that’s fair; our branch locations aren’t classified by any means. Lack of publicity isn’t the same as deliberately hiding ourselves.” Turning back to Bigman, he said, “All right, you’ve explained how it is that you came to meet him and at least one of the incidents David faced on Mars. But why did you decide to ‘look after him’, as you said?”
Bigman tilted his head, considering, then shrugged. “Can’t rightly say; I suppose I just took a shine to him after he swung at Griswold in the employment office. He seemed like a decent fella. Of course, once I figured out who he really was, it did occur to me that I’d likely see an interesting thing or two if I stuck with him.”
Conway had to admit to himself, so far he couldn’t see any reason to doubt David’s judgement on the subject of this particular Martian farmboy. But Councilmen couldn’t just bring their friends straight into the near inner circle normally (but since when had David ever exactly fit the definition of ‘normal’, he reminded himself).
“Well,” Conway said, shifting in his chair, “I suppose that brings us to the most significant topic: your departure from Mars in the company of one David Starr. What do you propose to do here on Earth? You said you thought you might see some interesting sights if you followed along with him. Do you intend to seek work with the Council?”
Bigman wrinkled his nose and sat forward. “No offense, Mr. Chief Councilman, but Dr. Silvers already offered me a job with the Council, and I told him thanks but no thanks.”
“He did?” Conway said, then blinked and added, “You did?”
“Well, sure. I knew if I took that job, they’d bundle me off into the Mars branch and Mr. Starr would get whisked off back to Earth, and it’d be so long, forever. And by that point, I’d already made up my mind to stick with Mr. Starr, you see. I came here with Mr. Starr, I said I’d stick with him, and that’s what I intend to do.” He jabbed a finger onto the tabletop to punctuate his determination.
Conway drummed his fingertips on his leg, stymied. “A bit of a risk, wasn’t it?” he ventured after a moment. “How did you know he’d bring you along?”
“I guess I didn’t know. I just had a feeling I ought to stay close to Mr. Starr, so I offered to come along,” Bigman shrugged.
Henree chewed his pipe, eyebrows raising. “I see. Well, what do you mean by sticking with him?”
Bigman sat back, the wind going out of his sails somewhat, and scratched his head. “I haven’t thought that much about it. I just know where Mr. Starr goes, I will, if he’ll have me.”
“That’s the crux of the matter; David’s a Councilman. He’s going to be hearing, seeing and doing things that have to be kept quiet for one reason or another. He’s been vouched for, not the least through his own training and upbringing,” pointed out Conway. “The only man who vouches for you is David, and while that carries a lot of weight with Gus and me, it also puts us in a bit of a sticky situation.”
Henree came to the rescue, or tried, at least. “I suppose what the Chief Councilman is getting at, Bigman, is this: we can’t have a non-Council employee following at the side of a ranking Councilman-- not without a reason, at least. What, exactly, would be your job description in Mr. Starr’s company?” He paused, then smiled kindly and added, “After all, if you’re approved, we’ll need something to put in the official mission records, won’t we?”
Bigman leaned in again, opened his mouth, then promptly shut it again. “....Well… huh.”
“Job description?” David leaned back in his chair, considering it. “I hadn’t really given it much thought, to be honest.”
He really is Lawrence’s boy, Henree thought wryly. They’d concluded their interview with Bigman, and now they’d moved on to debriefing David-- for both a fully detailed report of the mission’s particulars, and to settle the pressing and immediate issue of a certain Martian.
Henree smiled thinly. “We got much the same answer from him, too. And quite a few more, besides. Your friend has some strong opinions, my boy.”
David chuckled ruefully. “He does, at that, and he’s not shy with them, either. Now, as for a job description… well, I suppose it’s hard to define. An associate? A partner? ‘Assistant’ seems too dismissive...”
“You have friends on the Council-- Ben Wessilewsky or Lou Evans, for instance. We could pair you up with either of them, or someone else, if you want an investigative partner,” Conway pointed out.
“That’s true, I could take Wess or Evans along as a partner,” David admitted. “All the same, I’d rather have Bigman’s company.”
“You seem awfully certain,” Henree remarked. “What has you so convinced?”
“You could call it instinct, I suppose. Or intuition, if you’d care to use a less scientific term,” David said with a faint smile. “He has a sharp wit about him, and he sees the world differently than I do. That change in perspective could make all the difference in a difficult case. His temper is a force to be reckoned with, but I do believe that he’s reliable.
“Thinking back,” he mused, “from what you mentioned about my mission prep, he’s right; I’ll admit that I should have prepared for the Mars mission more thoroughly, and that nearly got me a few times. But having Bigman with me did make a difference when it counted. He worked with me at his own risk, and was a staunch friend even when it meant imperiling his own status amongst the farmboys. Essentially, I trusted him on Mars, and I’d trust him again anywhere else the Council chooses to send me.”
Conway frowned. “After knowing the man - what, just over a month? You’ve known your friends on the Council for much longer; most of them you’ve known since your Academy days.”
“You two had each other, and Father, on your missions, didn’t you? Would you have accepted anyone else?” David pointed out.
Henree couldn’t repress his smile. “I think he’s got us there, Hector.” He looked at the other man, who let out a slow puff of air as he leaned back in his chair and considered.
“Well, he’s got to be cleared. It’s that or it’s out of the question to go any further with this… partnership of sorts,” Conway declared. “I don’t doubt the man’s loyalty to the Terrestrial Federation, but you know we take it seriously when anyone in the Council, be it Councilmen or their employees or spouses, has a crime on their record.”
“Petty brawling’s the worst I expect of Bigman, and I’d hardly count him out for that,” asserted David. “And Uncle Hector, you can always issue a waiver if you have to.”
That, reflected Gus Henree, was true. Still, the Council of Science needed people of integrity, and too noticeable or egregious a crime on someone’s record was a huge setback for any progress they’d make. The thought of Senator Swenson briefly flitted across Henree’s mind as well.
Conway sent a sideways glance at Henree, eyes pleading for support, but Henree could only shrug. It was looking increasingly likely that David had just secured himself a new investigative partner, and a most unconventional one at that.
He huffed, and puffed, and grumbled. The paperwork would be a nightmare. There would be paperwork for the paperwork, and even more after that. And yet...
“Oh, all right,” Conway sighed heavily. He held up a single finger. “One trial run. I’ll grant him provisional approval to accompany you on one case. If he carries it off well enough, we’ll see about getting him clearance to accompany you on an indefinite basis.”
David sprang to his feet with a rare burst of enthusiasm, and reached out to shake Conway’s hand effusively. “Thank you, Uncle Hector, Uncle Gus,” he said warmly. “You’ll be granting that full approval soon enough, I’m sure of it!”
As it happened, David was right. There soon came a case that was ideal for the young Councilman, and they sent him off with his new accomplice-- and they came back with a rousing success to their names. As Hector Conway put through the paperwork to grant John Bigman Jones of Mars a security clearance nearly on par with David Starr’s, he could not possibly have known that he was legitimizing what would someday become the most famous duo in the Council’s history. However, if one asked him to look back on that moment and consider it, he would say that he’d had an inkling that he was setting something immense in motion.
After their return from that first mission, on the night that the paperwork cleared, Conway and Henree took the victorious pair to a celebratory dinner.
The owner of the Cafe Supreme, Gaspere, had been present when they arrived and asked for a private room. Clearly remembering who David and Augustus really were, he ushered them with all speed to the most exclusive alcove available, one with a curtained opening which could be further silenced by a discreet force-field across it.
The foursome, once seated, got busy punching their orders in at the console; once that was done, Gaspere brought in a wine, to which all concerned pronounced it good. He rather hastened out of the room again - a rather understandable reaction to having been present when the Council had nearly ruined his restaurant business (as he saw it, anyway, before realizing they meant it when it would only take the night to sweep the premises and let it reopen).
Hector Conway grinned and began, “Well, congratulations are definitely in order with how swiftly you two averted a possible diplomatic disaster with the Elamite Embassy. My old friend Doremo will be pleased to hear about that, at any rate.” He raised his wine glass and saluted David and Bigman.
Gus, on raising his glass, remarked, “It’s rather lucky you broke the case so quickly, I’d say.”
Bigman grinned. “Guess a lucky star was shining on us, hmm?”
David raised his glass, then had a sip and smiled. “I’m very thankful you both put your trust in Bigman and me, and I’m glad to see everything’s turned up quite well in the end.”
With that, the foursome began talking of other things, and the meal which arrived shortly after proved excellent. On this occasion, Gaspere of the Cafe Supreme could breathe more easily, as nothing happened aside from the occasional laugh, muffled as it was by the curtain and privacy shield over the secluded room.
And they did leave a nice gratuity in the end, too.