Double Star

by Robert A. Heinlein

I handed him my card, a little smugly perhaps. There is only one Lorenzo Smythe, the One-Man Stock Company. Yes, I’m “The Great Lorenzo”—stereo, canned opera, legit—“Pantomimist and Mimicry Artist Extraordinary.”

I liked him, even on ten minutes’ acquaintance; he was the sort of big ugly-handsome galoot that women go for and men take orders from.

I didn’t like Martians. I did not fancy having a thing that looks like a tree trunk topped off by a sun helmet claiming the privileges of a man. I did not like the way they grew pseudo limbs; it reminded me of snakes crawling out of their holes. I did not like the fact that they could look all directions at once without turning their heads—if they had had heads, which of course they don’t. And I could not stand their smell!

Nobody could accuse me of race prejudice. I didn’t care what a man’s color, race, or religion was. But men were men, whereas Martians were things. They weren’t even animals to my way of thinking. I’d rather have had a warthog around me any day. Permitting them in restaurants and bars used by men struck me as outrageous. But there was the Treaty, of course, so what could I do?

unless I deposited coins in the door, my room would not open to me that night... That was how low my fortunes had ebbed: reduced to sleeping in a coin-operated cubicle.

“Oh. Thank you,” I answered, making it as warm as possible since I was unable to tip him.

I could smell trouble. You don’t pick up a stranger in a bar and then insist that he come to a hotel room—well, not one of the same sex, at least.

I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter. I was not unduly fussy about legality qua legality; I agreed with the Bard that the Law is often an idiot. But in the main I had stayed on the right side of the street.

decided to forego the main entrance and took a bounce tube from the sub-basement to the twenty-first floor,

“Jock, pay him.” “For what?” “Pay him!” I now knew which one was boss—although, as I was to learn, there was usually little doubt when Dak Broadbent was in a room.

Before my revered father died he made me promise him three things: first, never to mix whisky with anything but water; second, always to ignore anonymous letters; and lastly, never to talk with a stranger who refuses to give his name. Good day, sirs.”

Dubois was saying: “Dak, you bloody, stupid, unprintable, illegal and highly improbable obscenity, do you want us both to wind up counting rocks on Titan? This conceited pipsqueak will spill his guts.”

Conceited indeed! Aside from a cold appreciation of my own genius I felt that I was a modest man.

Lorenzo, I don’t know exactly how long we will need you. No more than a few days, I’m certain—and you will be on display only an hour or so once or twice in that time.”

“Jock, call the field. Then call Langston and tell him we’re starting Plan Mardi Gras. Synchronize with him.

“Larry, you are too damned pretty! If you don’t get off your lazy duff and learn the business, you are going to spend fifteen years as a juvenile, under the mistaken impression that you are an actor—then wind up selling candy in the lobby. ‘Stupid’ and ‘pretty’ are the two worst vices in show business—and you’re both.”

Lorenzo's father.

Then he would take off his belt and stimulate my brain. Father was a practical psychologist and believed that warming the glutei maximi with a strap drew excess blood away from a boy’s brain. While the theory may have been shaky, the results justified the method; by the time I was fifteen I could stand on my head on a slack wire and quote page after page of Shakespeare and Shaw—or steal a scene simply by lighting a cigarette.

The Assassination of Huey Long,

“Benny Grey,” the colorless handyman who does the murders in The House with No Doors

“Probably Langston. He said he was going to try to get over here before we left.” Dubois started for the door.

Deprived of his weapon, the Martian did not attempt to escape. Dak bounced to his feet, slid up to him, and said, “Ah, Rrringriil. I see you.” “I see you, Captain Dak Broadbent,” the Martian squeaked, then added, “You will tell my nest?” “I will tell your nest, Rrringriil.” “I thank you, Captain Dak Broadbent.” Dak reached out a long bony finger and poked it into the eye nearest him, shoving it on home until his knuckles were jammed against the brain case.

Those monsters all look alike to me.” “And they say we all look alike. The four were Rrringriil, his conjugate-brother Rrringlath, and two others from his nest, of divergent lines. But shut up. If you see a Martian, shoot.

saw the sign blinking JEFFERSON SKYPORT—All Out. Nor did I care what station it was as long as it was as far as possible from Hotel Eisenhower.

crammed in the vactube

All I wanted out of life was money enough to keep body and soul together and a chance to practice my art; cops-and-robbers nonsense did not interest me—poor theater at best.

Diana, Ltd.,

This company appears in several Heinlein works -- and it's a real company.

I am well muscled and not small, but I felt as if a traffic robot were pulling me out of a danger zone.

I know all about you and you know nothing about me. For example...” He mentioned a couple of details in my past that I would have sworn were buried and forgotten. All right, so I did have a couple of routines useful for stag shows that are not for the family trade—a man has to eat. But that matter about Bebe; that was hardly fair, for I certainly had not known that she was underage. As for that hotel bill, while it is true that bilking an “innkeeper” in Miami Beach carries much the same punishment as armed robbery elsewhere, it is a very provincial attitude—I would have paid if I had had the money. As for that unfortunate incident in Seattle—well,

Red moved lazily out of the couch as Dak got in. The other man shoved me into the copilot’s couch and strapped a safety belt across my chest.

we had almost made rendezvous with a torchship, which was in parking orbit around Earth,

I finally recovered to the point where instead of wanting very badly to die the scale had tipped so that I had a flickering, halfhearted interest in continuing to live.

The Can Do—that’s this bucket—is about to rendezvous with the Go for Broke, which is a high-gee torchship. About seventeen seconds and a gnat’s wink after we make contact the Go for Broke will torch for Mars—for we’ve got to be there by Wednesday.”

A set of personal characteristics was fed into the big computer at the System Census Bureau at The Hague and the machine compared them with the personal characteristics of every male professional actor alive. It was done as discreetly as possible but somebody might have guessed—and talked. The specifications amounted to identification both of the principal and the actor who could double for him, since the job had to be perfect.”

But that popinjay was so conceited that—well, if the role called for him to kiss a lady’s hand, Trowbridge would fake it by kissing his own thumb instead. A narcissist, a poseur, a double fake—how could such a man live a role?

Martians don’t have ‘right’ and ‘wrong’—instead they have propriety and impropriety, squared, cubed, and loaded with gee juice.

The Chief is probably the greatest practical student of Martian customs and psychology. He has been working up to this for years. Comes local noon on Wednesday at Lacus Soli, the ceremony of adoption takes place. If the Chief is there and goes through his paces properly, everything is sweet. If he is not there—and it makes no difference at all why he is not there—his name is mud on Mars, in every nest from pole to pole—and the greatest interplanetary and interracial political coup ever attempted falls flat on its face.

“Howdy there, young fellow!” he boomed out. He was sixtyish, a bit too heavy, and bland; I did not have to see his diploma to be aware that his was a “bedside” manner.

I’m Dr. Capek, Mr. Bonforte’s personal therapist.

birds of paradise are the loveliest things alive.

I don’t know at what point I quit disliking Bonforte. Capek assured me—and I believe him—that he did not implant a hypnotic suggestion on this point; I had not asked for it and I am quite certain that Capek was meticulous about the ethical responsibilities of a physician and hypnotherapist. But I suppose that it was an inevitable concomitant of the role—I rather think I would learn to like Jack the Ripper if I studied for the part.

“To understand all is to forgive all”—and I was beginning to understand Bonforte.

All I know about spaceships is that the ones that operate from the surface of a planet are true rockets but the voyageurs call them “teakettles” because of the steam jet of water or hydrogen they boost with. They aren’t considered real atomic-power ships even though the jet is heated by an atomic pile. The long-jump ships such as the Tom Paine, torchships that is, are (so they tell me) the real thing, making use of E equals MC squared,

was fairly sure that Bonforte’s chief clerk, Mr. Washington, knew but never let on; he was a spare, elderly mulatto with the tight-lipped mask of a saint.

Bill Corpsman, who was Bonforte’s front man with the news services,

Roger Clifton. I don’t know quite how to describe Clifton’s job. Political deputy? He had been Minister without Portfolio, you may remember, when Bonforte was Supreme Minister, but that says nothing. Let’s put it symbolically: Bonforte handed out policy and Clifton handed out patronage.

They were all darn nice people—which told me as much about Bonforte as I had learned by listening to his speeches and seeing his pix. A political figure is not a single man, so I was learning, but a compatible team. If Bonforte himself had not been a decent sort he would not have had these people around him.

Smythe, how’s your Martian? Can you spiel it?” I answered with a single squeaking polysyllabic in High Martian, a sentence meaning roughly, “Proper conduct demands that one of us leave!” —but it means far more than that, as it is a challenge which usually ends in someone’s nest being notified of a demise.

Corpsman glanced at him, then shrugged. “All right, all right. I was just checking up—after all, this was my idea.” He gave me a one-sided smile and said, “Howdy, Mister Bonforte. Glad to see you back.”

MR. COMMISSIONER BOOTHROYD was a Humanity Party appointee, of course, as were all of his staff except for civil service technical employees. But Dak had told me that it was at least sixty-forty that Boothroyd had not had a finger in the plot; Dak considered him honest but stupid. For that matter, neither Dak nor Rog Clifton believed that Supreme Minister Quiroga was in it; they attributed the thing to the clandestine terrorist group inside the Humanity Party who called themselves the “Actionists”—and they attributed them to some highly respectable big-money boys who stood to profit heavily.

“I’m afraid you have converted a member of my own family to your Expansionist heresies. Hardly sporting, eh? Sitting ducks, and so forth?”