Worlds of IF (December 1968) (Modified) by Galaxy Publishing Corporation

Author:Galaxy Publishing Corporation
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: paul, grimes, kosloff, georg, castriota, data, mai, widder, professor, paul kosloff, young widder, georg castriota, data banks, computer conspiracy, science fiction, kid sid, lisa stebbins, poor harry, teevee phone
Published: 1968-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

or practical. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a permanent fixture in Man’s mythology.

Feeling like a Peeping Tom — another permanent fixture — he leafed through Lynn Davis’s service record. She was Terran-born, of course. Her real education had been at M.I.T., where she had graduated as a Bachelor of General Physics. After that she seemed to have specialized in meteorology. There had been a spell with weather control, North American Continent, and another spell with weather prediction, satellite-based. After that she had entered the service of Trans-Galactic Clippers as a spaceport meteorological officer. She had seen duty on Austral, Caribbea and Waverly, all of them planets upon which T-G maintained its own spaceports. From Waverly she had gone to Caribbea — and on Caribbea she had blotted her copy book.

So, thought Grimes, she’s a com -pulsive gambler . She doesn’t look like one. But they never do. It was on Caribbea that she had become a regular habitue of the New Port of Spain Casino.

She had, of course, worked out a system to beat the wheel. But the system hadn’t worked out for her. There had been the unhappy business of the cracking of the T-G Cashier’s safe — allegedly thief-proof, but (luckily) very few thieves hold a degree in physics.

There had been the new banknotes, the serial numbers of which were on record, that had turned up in the safe of the casino’s cashier. . . .

After that — the Rim Worlds.

A pity, said Grimes to himself. A pity. But it could have been worse. If she’d gone to Elsinore, in the Shakespearean Sector, where they’re notorious for their gambling, she’d really be in a mess by now.

He turned up the file on Petersen. The absentee Met Officer was another ex-Terran, and also had been employed with Trans-Galac-tic Clippers. Grimes noted with interest that Petersen had spent a few weeks on El Dorado, popularly known as "the planet of the filthy rich.” (Grimes had been there himself as a young man, as a junior officer in the Federation’s Survey Service.) It seemed that a T-G ship had called there on a millionaires’ cruise, and T-G had insisted on sending its own spaceport personnel there in advance.

Women, not money, had been Petersen’s trouble. Twice he had been named as co-respondent in an unsavory divorce case. If the ladies had not been the wives of prominent T-G executives it would not have mattered so much. But they were.

There could be a connection, thought Grimes. There could be. Both of them from Earth, both of them ex T-G. ... He shrugged

THE TIN FISHES

85

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