Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Amazing Stories April-May 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
TURNOVER POINT
By ALFRED COPPEL
Illustrator: EMSH
Every era in history has had its Pop Ganlon's. Along inyears and not successful and not caring much anyway. Amatter of living out their years, following an obscure pathto oblivion.
It was that way in ancient Egypt, just as it will be whenthe Solar System shrinks to our size. And once in a whilesuch men are given an opportunity to contribute to thesociety that has forgotten them....
op Ganlon was no hero—he was only a spaceman. A spaceman and afather. In fact, Pop was rather no-account, even in a profession thatabounded with drifters. He had made a meagre living prospectingasteroids and hauling light freight and an occasional passenger outin the Belt Region. Coffee and cakes, nothing more. Not many peopleknew Pop had a son in the Patrol, and even fewer knew it when the boywas blasted to a cinder in a back alley in Lower Marsport.
Pop went on eating and breathing, but his life was over after that. Hehit the bottle a little harder and his ship, The Luck, grew rustierand tackier, and those were the only outward signs that Pop Ganlon wasa living dead man. He kept on grubbing among the cold rocks andpushing The Luck from Marsport to Callisto and back with whateverlow-mass payloads he could pick up. He might have lived out his stringof years like that, obscure and alone, if it hadn't been for JohnKane. Kane was Pop Ganlon's ticket to a sort of personalimmortality—if there is such a thing for an old spaceman.
It was in Yakki, down-canal from Marsport, that Kane found Pop. Thereis a small spaceport there—a boneyard, really—for buckets whoseskippers can't pay the heavy tariff imposed by the big ramp. All thewrecks nest there while waiting hopefully for a payload or agrubstake. They have all of Solis Lacus for a landing field, and ifthey spill it doesn't matter much. The drifting red sands soon coverup the scattered shards of dural and the slow, lonely life of Yakkigoes on like before.
The Patrol was on Kane's trail and the blaster in his hand was stillwarm when he shoved it up against Pop Ganlon's ribs and made hisproposition.
He wanted to get off Mars—out to Callisto. To Blackwater, to Ley'sLanding, it didn't matter too much. Just off Mars, and quickly. Hiseyes had a metallic glitter and his hand was rock-steady. Pop knew hemeant what he said when he told him life was cheap. Someone else'slife, not Kane's.
That's how it happened that The Luck lifted that night from Yakki,outward bound for Ley's Landing, with Pop and Kane aboard her alone.
Sitting at the battered console of The Luck, Pop watched hispassenger. He knew Kane, of course. Or rather, he knew of him. Akiller. The kind that thrives and grows fat on the frontiers. Thebulky frame, the cropped black hair, the predatory eyes that lookedlike two blaster muzzles. They were all