The Lagrangists. Mack Reynolds

“Younger brother’s mini-apartment is only two floors above hell.”

      As they entered the compartment and Mickoff spoke into the screen, the girl eyed Rex again. “Why?” she said. “Why do you live below ground level?”

      “Because it’s cheaper,” he told her bluntly. “When you spend most of your time on the nit, you watch every pseudo-dollar.”

      He ushered them down the hall toward his quarters, saying to Jack Mickoff, “I give up, John. Where were you in that autobar-club?”

      “I had my back to you. Doctor Hawkins wanted to give you a good looking over before we made contact.”

      “Oh,” Rex said. “Well, Doctor, did you like what you saw? I had the feeling I was being stared at by Dracula.”

      “Dracula?”

      “An old movie friend of mine,” he muttered, opening the door of his bachelor mini-apartment.

      The girl looked around blankly. “My,” she said. “This is a mini-apartment, isn’t it?”

      Rex picked up a book from the couch which made up into his bed at night, tossed it to one side and said, “That’s right. When I’m feeling athletic I can stand in the middle of this living room-bedroom-study and touch the walls to each side and then reach up and touch the ceiling.”

      She sat in the room’s sole comfort chair while Rex and John Mickoff took their places on the couch.

      John Mickoff had a few years and a few pounds on Rex; stocky in build, he had squarish Slavic features, with a built-in cynical look. He looked something like Marshal Tito in his younger days.

      He said now, “You sound bitter, old chum-pal. Isn’t the private detective dodge profiting?”

      “Not exactly. Now that we use-Universal Credit Cards, instead of money, crime isn’t very practical. Nobody can spend your money but you, nobody can con it away from you, and there are few places left in the world where they’re allowed to gamble it away from you. On top of that, the divorce business is in the doldrums and it used to be one of the stand-bys in the private investigation business. But practically nobody bothers to get married these days. And even if they do, they’re usually both living on the nit, and no property is involved, so who needs a private detective to get evidence? They just split, and call it quits.”

      “Sounds grim, younger brother,” Mickoff said pleasantly. “How does one acquire a drink around this, ah, dump?”

      Rex glared at him. “One goes to the autobar, over there in the corner of this dump, and dials what he dumping wants and puts his dumping credit card into the payment slot.”

      “By the ever living whozis, that sounds like a practical idea,” the IABI man said, coming to his feet and heading for the autobar. “Doctor, could I offer you refreshment?”

      “I’d love a sherry,” she said. “Let me see, let’s say a Duff-Gordon Amontillado.”

      Rex Bader closed his eyes in pain, though happy he didn’t have to pay for it. He could eat for a couple of days on what one imported Spanish sherry would set him back. Such luxuries in guzzle were out of his class. He stuck to the new synthetics, such as pseudowhiskey. Synthetic or “natural” ethenol was ethanol. Or so the chemists assured him! Didn’t taste that way, though.

      “Younger brother?” Mickoff said over his shoulder as he dialed the Spanish wine.

      Rex said, “Just as sure as Zen made little green apples, you’re on an expense account. So I’ll have exactly what you’re having chum-pal.”

      “Scotch,” Mickoff said. He dialed and brought the glasses back and distributed them. “And now, younger brother, what do you know about Lagrange Five and related subjects?”

      Rex said with some bitterness, “I thought I knew a great deal about it. But evidently the Lagrange Five people and the computers of the National Data Banks didn’t.”

      Susie looked at him. “How do you mean, Mr. Bader?”

      He knocked back some of his drink, relishing the treat, and said, “I’m one of the few who rebel against being on GAS, Guaranteed Annual Stipend, or Negative Income Tax, nit,—pick a name that suits you. Over ninety percent of Americans can’t get jobs because they’ve been automated and computerized out from under us. Some, most, maybe, don’t mind. They spend their lives staring at Tri-Di and sucking on track pills to keep themselves happy. I mind a lot. Since getting out of school, I’ve tried various possibilities. I took quite a bit of training to be an aircraft pilot.”

      Mickoff chuckled.

      Rex glared at him. “Stow it, you laughing hyena.” He turned back to the girl. “By the time I had my various licenses, almost all airplane pilots had been automated out of their profession. So I started studying in other fields. But it was the same everywhere. For all practical purposes, there are no jobs anymore. But when I was a kid I used to avidly read Raymond Chandler, Dash Hammett, John D. MacDonald and so forth, and I thought possibly that was a chance; so I studied up on subjects that would allow me to apply for a private investigator’s license. But, as I said earlier, there’s precious little crime of the sort that private detectives used to be hired for. So my business as a private detective isn’t very lucrative. Consequently, on the side I began studying up on the Lagrange Five Project, the space colonization bit. I thought that I might be able to get a job up there, on the construction end. So much for what I thought.”

      “What happened?” Susie Hawkins said.

      “When I applied for a job,” Rex told her, “after I’d crammed my head full of everything that I thought might be of value on any job, they turned me down.”

      “Why?” Susie said, sipping at her sherry.

      He shrugged it off. “All dope on your abilities, experience, I.Q. and so on, go into your Dossier Complete in the National Data Banks. When jobs are available, on the Lagrange Five Project or anywhere else, and you apply for one, the computers check you out. And guess what happens? They turn you down.”

      “Why?” Susie said again.

      Mickoff laughed and said to Rex, “Tell her, younger brother.”

      Rex growled at him and finished his sherry. He put the glass down, picked up the scotch, and looked at her. “Probably because I’m stupid,” he said.

      “Highly impossible, if I’m any judge,” she murmured with a smile.

      He sighed, wondering still once again, what all this was building up to. He knew perfectly well that John Mickoff was a big-wig in the Inter-American Bureau of Investigation of the United States of the Americas. They had worked together, in a glancing sort of way, before. Usually they’d met on assignments when the government didn’t want to admit they were involved and so hired Rex to do the dirty work. Mickoff, when Rex had first met him, had been the right hand man of John Coolidge, the long-time Director of the IABI. But since Coolidge’s death they had a new administration. What sort of title Mickoff held now, Rex Bader didn’t have the vaguest idea. But the very fact that John Mickoff was here with this girl—rather, this Doctor of Physics—must mean something.

      He said now. “Flattery will get you everywhere, Doctor…”

      “Call me Susie. I seem to be the type that invariably gets called by the first name.”

      “The fact remains that when I applied for a job with the L5 Project, they turned me down.”

      “Well,” Mickoff said, “Younger brother, it looks as though they are just about to give you one.” He looked at Doctor Susie Hawkins, her eyebrows high in question.

      Susie nodded.

      “What the hell are you talking about?” Rex said.

      “You’ve just landed a job on the Lagrange Five Project,” Mickoff said cheerfully.

      Rex sipped his scotch. “Good booze,” he