article
stringlengths 10.6k
35.3k
| question
stringlengths 11
490
| options
list | answer
int64 0
3
| hard
bool 2
classes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Why is Si retirement so significant to the Space Exploration Team?
|
[
"There aren’t enough working people in the world. They won’t be able to find a replacement.",
"As one of two remaining spacemen, it would likely mean the defunding and shut down of the Space Exploration Team.",
"Training new spacemen is costly and time consuming. They won’t have anyone else ready after him.",
"His retirement may inspire others to stop working as well, which would be hugely detrimental as most people don't feel the drive to work as is."
] | 2 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What makes Gubelin an outlier in the present day?
|
[
"He is much older than the rest of the population.",
"He refuses new operations that could improve his health.",
"His mind is still active, and he values hard work.",
"He still wears glasses and value objects like the gold watch given to Si."
] | 3 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What is the main reason that Gubelin is so resentful of Si’s decision?
|
[
"He doesn’t want to have to go through the effort of training a new spaceman, as it’s very costly and time consuming.",
"He regrets not having the opportunity of space exploration himself.",
"He fears the end of the Space Exploration program, and for mankind’s research of space to come to an end.",
"He hates the Welfare State and how it’s taken away people’s drive to learn and explore."
] | 2 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What is the main reason behind the Welfare State operating as it does?
|
[
"Automation with computers has made the need to work largely obsolete.",
"The current populace is not skilled enough to work, and thus most people are a part of the Welfare State",
"The government does not want new workers, and is content supplying people with the funds they need to get through life.",
"Overtime, the public has lost its drive to work. Thus, no one enforces a workforce."
] | 0 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What happens to drafted workers?
|
[
"They train and work for a time, then retire with extra funds.",
"They receive no pay, and have to undergo training and work for some time",
"They are called upon throughout their life for periods of work.",
"They work a short period of time, then return to normal life."
] | 0 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Why is Si so astonished when there is a real bartender working the bar?
|
[
"He hasn’t been talking to people, and Si is caught off guard seeing someone face to face again after so long.",
"He’s never seen a bartender before, nor been in an establishment that has one.",
"He was in his thoughts considering his money, and was caught off guard.",
"He didn’t expect it. It’s a job that is normally automated, and it’s shocking to see a human working it."
] | 3 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Why does Si deliberate on how to spend his night?
|
[
"He finally has the opportunity to let loose, and wants to revel in it.",
"He’s spent his money on “cheap” entertainment in the past, and wants to do better now.",
"He’s not used to this freedom and is unsure what to do.",
"He’s not used to living this way and is uncomfortable."
] | 1 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What is the “space cafard” that Si describes?
|
[
"It’s the isolation that spacemen feel working alone in space, with only computers as company",
"It’s the public’s adverse opinion of space exploration that Gubelin tries to hide.",
"It’s the desire to return home from a long voyage.",
"It is the current system of operations for spacecraft, where people man ships with only one person."
] | 0 | false |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
What caused the error in O'Rielly's controls?
|
[
"A control malfunctioned and reset itself.",
"He missed something when they were preparing.",
"The controls weren't locked before take-off.",
"The Venus woman tampered with it."
] | 3 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
O'Rielly starts to talk about "venus dames" unprompted and acting strangely. Why?
|
[
"He's out of sorts from working on the controls. The heat got to him.",
"He's had an experience with them in the past, and wants to discuss is with Callahan.",
"It's the effect that Venus women have on Earth men. The woman's presence changes his focus.",
"He's embarrassed about the controls malfunction and is trying to change the subject"
] | 2 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
Why have Venus men struggled to keep their women interested in them?
|
[
"Their culture has men in power, and thus they don't consider women their equals.",
"Earth men are too enticing to Venus women. They can't compete.",
"They have been too pre-occupied with war, haven't realized the truth.",
"Venus females don't interest them enough."
] | 2 | false |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
What can be said about Grandmamma Berta, Trillium, and the Madame President of Earth?
|
[
"They have all felt disrespected by then men that ruled over them.",
"They all anticipated this revolution, and have been working together to make it happen.",
"Madame President did not expect the revolution, but supports Trillium and Berta.",
"None of them anticipated this revolution. It all happened at once."
] | 1 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why does Eppel indicate an orange light when scanning the planet?
|
[
"It wants the crew to make their own judgement, because it doesn't know what to make of it.",
"It senses Ha-Adamah's perception.",
"It senses the \"Old Serpent's\" perception.",
"It senses that an omnipotent being."
] | 0 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why does the crew later refer to Ha-Adamah as Adam?
|
[
"He responds to Adam, and they decide it's his true name",
"Ha-Adamah is Adam's Hebrew origination.",
"The planet feels so much like the Garden of Eden, that they begin to believe he is Adam",
"They want to test Adam and see if he accepts it as his name."
] | 1 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why does Adam refuse to play checkers?
|
[
"He does not want to humiliate the priest by beating him.",
"The priest is too eager to go up against him, and he doesn't want to disappoint.",
"He has no reason to play. He is omniscient and would win without contest.",
"He is scared of losing and giving away his true identity."
] | 3 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
How does the "Old Serpent" know that the crew is returning with settlers?
|
[
"He understands people, and that they'll want to have their way with the planet.",
"Like Adam, he has extraordinary perception and can predict it happening.",
"It has happened before. He knows that people cannot resist the temptation and takes advantage of it.",
"The crew made it clear they would return."
] | 2 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
What ultimately makes the priest disbelieve what they've seen, despite his faith?
|
[
"He senses the \"unusual mind\" of Adam, and it made him uneasy.",
"He is too faithful to risk trusting what they've seen.",
"Someone like Adam would not be afraid of playing checkers, or being personable.",
"The illusion is too perfect, and it feels inauthentic to him."
] | 2 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
What is likely to happen to the crew when they return to the planet?
|
[
"They'll fall victim like those before them, and have their supplies stolen.",
"They'll return, still believing it's the Garden of Eden.",
"They'll learn the truth about the Old Serpent and Adam, and leave.",
"They'll carry through with their settlement plans and cash in."
] | 0 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why does Shannon reach for his gun when Beamish introduces himself?
|
[
"The sound of the chair being pulled back sets him on high alert.",
"He sees that Beamish has something in his hands.",
"Shannon is prone to suspicion after being hunted down by people they owe money to, and thinks Beamish is one of them.",
"Beamish tells them he's there to collect money from them."
] | 2 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why is it so important for Jig and Shannon to find Gertrude a mate?
|
[
"They want to preserve her species, and they're close to extinction. Her species is too valuable to let die out.",
"They need another \"cansin\" for their show.",
"She feels alone in her cage and in the circus, and they feel badly for her.",
"Her crying and loneliness without one is affecting the entire crew, and they can't afford to have her out of commission."
] | 3 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Who does Jig suspect wants them dead, and let loose the vapor snakes?
|
[
"Beamish and the crew. The circus has not been doing well, and Beamish may be unhappy with the deal they cut.",
"The crew. They resent how little money they make.",
"Beamish, because he knows they cut him a bad deal.",
"Gow. He didn't call back the snakes as they attacked them, and is beside himself because of Gertrude."
] | 2 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
What is Ahra referring to when she says "something has been taken?"
|
[
"Gertrude's happiness.",
"Beamish's money.",
"The cansin male.",
"Jig and Shannon's safety."
] | 2 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
How does Shannon feel about the circus?
|
[
"He needs it for money, nothing more.",
"He resents that he's stuck with it, and gets angry when people insult it.",
"Despite it's quality, he truly cares about it.",
"He believes in it's quality, and has faith in it."
] | 2 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why does Jig bluff to Beamish initially?
|
[
"He knows he can get away with it - Beamish has the money to match what they ask.",
"He doesn't trust Shannon to close a good deal.",
"He doesn't trust Beamish, and wants to see if he's committed to the idea.",
"For them to start a new tour would be costly for them, and Jig wants to get the maximum price."
] | 0 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
What effects do the Green Flame rocks have?
|
[
"It makes people lethargic and easily manipulated.",
"They spread radioactivity to people and make them ill.",
"They influence people to take power over other people.",
"They are electromagnetic and shock people."
] | 0 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why is Grannie Annie so concerned about the Green Flame’s whereabouts?
|
[
"She wants to finish writing her story about them and needs to see them again.",
"She believes that Doctor Universe is using to for his show to manipulate people.",
"The current political climate is restless, and if used Green Flames could lead to a disaster.",
"She wants it for herself and to continue researching the effects of Green Flame."
] | 2 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
What makes Grannie Annie's writing remarkable?
|
[
"She isn't a writer of any notararitey.",
"She is an esteemed actor on top of being a writer.",
"She writes intense science fiction.",
"Her science fiction stories are typical, but she visits the locations she writes about and does so authentically."
] | 3 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why is Billy so drawn to Grannie Annie?
|
[
"She knows about the Green Flame and Billy wants to know more about them.",
"Her writing wows him.",
"She's a famous author. He's naturally drawn to that fame.",
"She's an eccentric adventurer at heart, and compelling."
] | 3 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
What is Grannie Annie referring to when she says "the I.P men aren't strong enough?"
|
[
"She doesn't feel that the I.P men are serving well enough.",
"Just that - that the local law enforcement should be stronger.",
"She knows that as the politcal climate worsens, the I.P won't be able to keep up with the chaos.",
"The I.P men weren't quick enough to protect Billy and her from the attack."
] | 2 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
What is true about Doctor Universe?
|
[
"His audience reacts so well to him because much of the population is under the influence of Green Flame.",
"He knows about the whereabouts of Green Flame and is hiding it from Grannie Annie.",
"There is nothing of note to him. He is just a popular TV personaility.",
"He is using Green Flame himsel to influence his audience and force them to watch. He is the one who stole it."
] | 0 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why are people after Grannie Annie?
|
[
"She entered the Spacemen's Club, which she was not allowed to do as a woman.",
"She was on Doctor Universe's show.",
"She knows too much about the Green Flames and they want to prevent her from obtaining it.",
"As a prolific author who travel a lot, she's made a lot of enemies."
] | 2 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
How will the story likely continue?
|
[
"The group will continue to search for a way to get to the Green Flames.",
"The Green Flames will make Grannie Annie lose her drive to obtain them.",
"Grannie Annie will leave the storage of Green Flame behind, since she can’t get through the glass.",
"arn will betray the duo and take the lot for himself."
] | 0 | false |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Why does Joseph lie about the water supply?
|
[
"There isn't a lot of water there, and he needs to be able to ration it out.",
"He wants people to believe they need to pay for it.",
"He wants to keep the fresh water for himself.",
"He thinks that people would prefer to buy filtered water."
] | 1 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
What is "La-anago Yergis"?
|
[
"It's a panacea that can cure any ailment.",
"It's medicine. It's a cure for \"asteroid fever.\"",
"It's purified water.",
"It's a placebo. It's not real medicine."
] | 3 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Why do Harvey and Joe change thier plan when confronting Johnson about the water?
|
[
"Joe suddenly feels unwell, and Harvey needs to help him.",
"They want to buy Genius, and don't want there to be bad blood.",
"Joseph's son is large and intimidating, and they want to avoid a fight.",
"They don't think they could take Joseph in a fight."
] | 2 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
What makes Johnson's son so different?
|
[
"He grew up without Earth's gravity, allowing him to grow larger than most people.",
"He is much larger than the average man.",
"Like Genius, he is not human.",
"He's been living isolated from other humans with his father."
] | 0 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
How is Joe's asteroid fever cured?
|
[
"The La-anago Yergis cures him.",
"Nothing does - his sickness was a ruse.",
"The bitter water that Harvey switched in cures him.",
"The fresh water from the planet cures him."
] | 1 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Johnson claims to have a multitude of jobs. Which title best describes him and what he does?
|
[
"Conman.",
"Bartender.",
"Mayor.",
"Sheriff."
] | 0 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Why does Johnson stay on the asteroid, even though few people come by?
|
[
"Here he's able to meet traders like Harvey and Joe and barter with them.",
"He's able to run business even with few customers.",
"Here he's able to take advantage of travelers who are lost or in need of supplies.",
"He doesn't want to give up the spring of water."
] | 2 | false |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
How does Johnson trick the duo into paying for things more than once?
|
[
"He strong arms them into buying with his son.",
"He is dishonest. He offers something for free, without mentioning the actual price of it or that there even is a price.",
"He takes advantage of their good will.",
"He doesn't trick anyone - he is an honest man that is running several jobs."
] | 1 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Why was Si given a symbolic gold watch by the Department of Space Exploration?
|
[
"He had just successfully completed a dangerous space mission that they were impressed with.",
"As an apology for the difficult task he had to complete while in space.",
"He was retiring from the Department.",
"As a means to convince him to stay on with the Department and continue completing missions."
] | 2 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Why did the Department hope that Si would continue for three more space missions?
|
[
"He didn't complain about the explorations and enjoyed his time in space.",
"His required compensation was lower than the other pilots.",
"It would take too long to train a new pilot to complete the explorations.",
"He was the best of the best in the space exploration team."
] | 2 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What clearly showed a sense humbleness presented by Si?
|
[
"His ability to obtain the swank suite at the hotel.",
"The presence of a human bartender in the Kudos Room.",
"His lack of awareness that he would be considered a celebrity at the Kudos Room.",
"His quaint behavior at the banquet where he was presented with a gold watch."
] | 2 | true |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What was considered a downside to the space exploration by Si?
|
[
"The inability to start of family of his own due to being away for long periods of time.",
"The fear of contracting space cafard.",
"His fear of being in the ship itself.",
"Becoming too used to being along for long periods of time."
] | 1 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Based on indicators in the passage, what can be inferred as the time setting of the story?
|
[
"The present, based on the character use of credit cards.",
"The past, based on the dialogue used by characters.",
"The future, based on the advanced technology",
"The present, due to the government restrictions on space exploration."
] | 2 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
Why did Si choose to visit Manhattan and the Kudos Room?
|
[
"In hopes of seeing and befriending a celebrity",
"That's the only place that an alcoholic beverage can be legally purchased.",
"He was planning to meet an attractive woman there.",
"To celebrate his retirement and spend some of his extra funds."
] | 3 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
After being drafted into the working force reserves, how many trips did Si have to complete in order to retire?
|
[
"1 trip",
"6 trips",
"5 trips",
"15 trips"
] | 1 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What context shows that Si was able to retire from the working force reserves with honorable rank?
|
[
"He purchased and dressed in the honorable retirement-rank suit.",
"He was granted access into the vacuum-tube two-seater for transportation.",
"His receipt of Basic onto his credit card that would fund all of his necessities.",
"He was permitted to enter the Kudos Room at the hotel."
] | 0 | false |
SPACEMAN ON A SPREE
BY MACK REYNOLDS
Illustrated by Nodel
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of Tomorrow June 1963
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
What's more important—Man's conquest
of space, or one spaceman's life?
I
They gave him a gold watch. It was meant to be symbolical, of course.
In the old tradition. It was in the way of an antique, being one of the
timepieces made generations past in the Alpine area of Eur-Asia. Its
quaintness lay in the fact that it was wound, not electronically by
power-radio, but by the actual physical movements of the bearer, a free
swinging rotor keeping the mainspring at a constant tension.
They also had a banquet for him, complete with speeches by such
bigwigs of the Department of Space Exploration as Academician Lofting
Gubelin and Doctor Hans Girard-Perregaux. There was also somebody
from the government who spoke, but he was one of those who were
pseudo-elected and didn't know much about the field of space travel
nor the significance of Seymour Pond's retirement. Si didn't bother to
remember his name. He only wondered vaguely why the cloddy had turned
up at all.
In common with recipients of gold watches of a score of generations
before him, Si Pond would have preferred something a bit more tangible
in the way of reward, such as a few shares of Variable Basic to add to
his portfolio. But that, he supposed, was asking too much.
The fact of the matter was, Si knew that his retiring had set them
back. They hadn't figured he had enough shares of Basic to see him
through decently. Well, possibly he didn't, given their standards.
But Space Pilot Seymour Pond didn't have their standards. He'd had
plenty of time to think it over. It was better to retire on a limited
crediting, on a confoundedly limited crediting, than to take the two or
three more trips in hopes of attaining a higher standard.
He'd had plenty of time to figure it out, there alone in space on the
Moon run, there on the Venus or Mars runs. There on the long, long
haul to the Jupiter satellites, fearfully checking the symptoms of
space cafard, the madness compounded of claustrophobia, monotony,
boredom and free fall. Plenty of time. Time to decide that a one
room mini-auto-apartment, complete with an autochair and built-in
autobar, and with one wall a teevee screen, was all he needed to
find contentment for a mighty long time. Possibly somebody like
Doc Girard-Perregaux might be horrified at the idea of living in a
mini-auto-apartment ... not realizing that to a pilot it was roomy
beyond belief compared to the conning tower of a space craft.
No. Even as Si listened to their speeches, accepted the watch and
made a halting little talk of his own, he was grinning inwardly. There
wasn't anything they could do. He had them now. He had enough Basic to
keep him comfortably, by his standards, for the rest of his life. He
was never going to subject himself to space cafard again. Just thinking
about it, now, set the tic to going at the side of his mouth.
They could count down and blast off, for all he gave a damn.
The gold watch idea had been that of Lofting Gubelin, which was
typical, he being in the way of a living anachronism himself. In fact,
Academician Gubelin was possibly the only living man on North America
who still wore spectacles. His explanation was that a phobia against
having his eyes touched prohibited either surgery to remould his
eyeballs and cure his myopia, or contact lenses.
That was only an alibi so far as his closest associate, Hans
Girard-Perregaux, was concerned. Doctor Girard-Perregaux was convinced
Gubelin would have even worn facial hair, had he but a touch more
courage. Gubelin longed for yesteryear, a seldom found phenomenon under
the Ultrawelfare State.
Slumped in an autochair in the escape room of his Floridian home,
Lofting Gubelin scowled at his friend. He said, acidly, "Any more
bright schemes, Hans? I presume you now acknowledge that appealing to
the cloddy's patriotism, sentiment and desire for public acclaim have
miserably failed."
Girard-Perregaux said easily, "I wouldn't call Seymour Pond a cloddy.
In his position, I am afraid I would do the same thing he has."
"That's nonsense, Hans. Zoroaster! Either you or I would gladly take
Pond's place were we capable of performing the duties for which he has
been trained. There aren't two men on North America—there aren't two
men in the world!—who better realize the urgency of continuing our
delving into space." Gubelin snapped his fingers. "Like that, either of
us would give our lives to prevent man from completely abandoning the
road to his destiny."
His friend said drily, "Either of us could have volunteered for pilot
training forty years ago, Lofting. We didn't."
"At that time there wasn't such a blistering percentage of funkers
throughout this whole blistering Ultrawelfare State! Who could
foresee that eventually our whole program would face ending due to
lack of courageous young men willing to take chances, willing to face
adventure, willing to react to the stimulus of danger in the manner our
ancestors did?"
Girard-Perregaux grunted his sarcasm and dialed a glass of iced tea
and tequila. He said, "Nevertheless, both you and I conform with the
present generation in finding it far more pleasant to follow one's
way of life in the comfort of one's home than to be confronted with
the unpleasantness of facing nature's dangers in more adventurous
pastimes."
Gubelin, half angry at his friend's argument, leaned forward to snap
rebuttal, but the other was wagging a finger at him negatively. "Face
reality, Lofting. Don't require or expect from Seymour Pond more
than is to be found there. He is an average young man. Born in our
Ultrawelfare State, he was guaranteed his fundamental womb-to-tomb
security by being issued that minimum number of Basic shares in our
society that allows him an income sufficient to secure the food,
clothing, shelter, medical care and education to sustain a low level
of subsistence. Percentages were against his ever being drafted
into industry. Automation being what it is, only a fraction of the
population is ever called up. But Pond was. His industrial aptitude
dossier revealed him a possible candidate for space pilot, and it was
you yourself who talked him into taking the training ... pointing out
the more pragmatic advantages such as complete retirement after but six
trips, added shares of Basic so that he could enjoy a more comfortable
life than most and the fame that would accrue to him as one of the
very few who still participate in travel to the planets. Very well.
He was sold. Took his training, which, of course, required long years
of drudgery to him. Then, performing his duties quite competently, he
made his six trips. He is now legally eligible for retirement. He was
drafted into the working force reserves, served his time, and is now
free from toil for the balance of his life. Why should he listen to
our pleas for a few more trips?"
"But has he no spirit of adventure? Has he no feeling for...."
Girard-Perregaux was wagging his finger again, a gesture that,
seemingly mild though it was, had an astonishing ability to break off
the conversation of one who debated with the easy-seeming, quiet spoken
man.
He said, "No, he hasn't. Few there are who have, nowadays. Man has
always paid lip service to adventure, hardships and excitement, but in
actuality his instincts, like those of any other animal, lead him to
the least dangerous path. Today we've reached the point where no one
need face danger—ever. There are few who don't take advantage of the
fact. Including you and me, Lofting, and including Seymour Pond."
His friend and colleague changed subjects abruptly, impatiently. "Let's
leave this blistering jabber about Pond's motivation and get to the
point. The man is the only trained space pilot in the world. It will
take months, possibly more than a year, to bring another novitiate
pilot to the point where he can safely be trusted to take our next
explorer craft out. Appropriations for our expeditions have been
increasingly hard to come by—even though in
our
minds, Hans, we are
near important breakthroughs, breakthroughs which might possibly so
spark the race that a new dream to push man out to the stars will take
hold of us. If it is admitted that our organization has degenerated
to the point that we haven't a single pilot, then it might well be
that the Economic Planning Board, and especially those cloddies
on Appropriations, will terminate the whole Department of Space
Exploration."
"So...." Girard-Perregaux said gently.
"So some way we've got to bring Seymour Pond out of his retirement!"
"Now we are getting to matters." Girard-Perregaux nodded his agreement.
Looking over the rim of his glass, his eyes narrowed in thought as his
face took on an expression of Machiavellianism. "And do not the ends
justify the means?"
Gubelin blinked at him.
The other chuckled. "The trouble with you, Lofting, is that you have
failed to bring history to bear on our problem. Haven't you ever read
of the sailor and his way of life?"
"Sailor? What in the name of the living Zoroaster has the sailor got to
do with it?"
"You must realize, my dear Lofting, that our Si Pond is nothing more
than a latter-day sailor, with many of the problems and view-points,
tendencies and weaknesses of the voyager of the past. Have you never
heard of the seaman who dreamed of returning to the village of his
birth and buying a chicken farm or some such? All the long months at
sea—and sometimes the tramp freighters or whaling craft would be out
for years at a stretch before returning to home port—he would talk
of his retirement and his dream. And then? Then in port, it would be
one short drink with the boys, before taking his accumulated pay and
heading home. The one short drink would lead to another. And morning
would find him, drunk, rolled, tattooed and possibly sleeping it off in
jail. So back to sea he'd have to go."
Gubelin grunted bitterly. "Unfortunately, our present-day sailor
can't be separated from his money quite so easily. If he could, I'd
personally be willing to lure him down some dark alley, knock him over
the head and roll him myself. Just to bring him back to his job again."
He brought his wallet from his pocket, and flicked it open to his
universal credit card. "The ultimate means of exchange," he grunted.
"Nobody can spend your money, but you, yourself. Nobody can steal it,
nobody can, ah,
con
you out of it. Just how do you expect to sever
our present-day sailor and his accumulated nest egg?"
The other chuckled again. "It is simply a matter of finding more modern
methods, my dear chap."
II
Si Pond was a great believer in the institution of the spree. Any
excuse would do. Back when he had finished basic education at the age
of twenty-five and was registered for the labor draft, there hadn't
been a chance in a hundred that he'd have the bad luck to have his
name pulled. But when it had been, Si had celebrated.
When he had been informed that his physical and mental qualifications
were such that he was eligible for the most dangerous occupation in
the Ultrawelfare State and had been pressured into taking training
for space pilot, he had celebrated once again. Twenty-two others had
taken the training with him, and only he and Rod Cameroon had passed
the finals. On this occasion, he and Rod had celebrated together. It
had been quite a party. Two weeks later, Rod had burned on a faulty
take-off on what should have been a routine Moon run.
Each time Si returned from one of his own runs, he celebrated. A spree,
a bust, a bat, a wing-ding, a night on the town. A commemoration of
dangers met and passed.
Now it was all over. At the age of thirty he was retired. Law prevented
him from ever being called up for contributing to the country's labor
needs again. And he most certainly wasn't going to volunteer.
He had taken his schooling much as had his contemporaries. There wasn't
any particular reason for trying to excell. You didn't want to get the
reputation for being a wise guy, or a cloddy either. Just one of the
fellas. You could do the same in life whether you really studied or
not. You had your Inalienable Basic stock, didn't you? What else did
you need?
It had come as a surprise when he'd been drafted for the labor force.
In the early days of the Ultrawelfare State, they had made a mistake
in adapting to the automation of the second industrial revolution.
They had attempted to give everyone work by reducing the number of
working hours in the day, and the number of working days in the week.
It finally became ludicrous when employees of industry were working
but two days a week, two hours a day. In fact, it got chaotic. It
became obvious that it was more practical to have one worker putting in
thirty-five hours a week and getting to know his job well, than it was
to have a score of employees, each working a few hours a week and none
of them ever really becoming efficient.
The only fair thing was to let the technologically unemployed remain
unemployed, with their Inalienable Basic stock as the equivalent of
unemployment insurance, while the few workers still needed put in a
reasonable number of hours a day, a reasonable number of weeks a year
and a reasonable number of years in a life time. When new employees
were needed, a draft lottery was held.
All persons registered in the labor force participated. If you
were drawn, you must need serve. The dissatisfaction those chosen
might feel at their poor luck was offset by the fact that they were
granted additional Variable Basic shares, according to the tasks
they fulfilled. Such shares could be added to their portfolios, the
dividends becoming part of their current credit balance, or could be
sold for a lump sum on the market.
Yes, but now it was all over. He had his own little place, his own
vacuum-tube vehicle and twice the amount of shares of Basic that most
of his fellow citizens could boast. Si Pond had it made. A spree was
obviously called for.
He was going to do this one right. This was the big one. He'd
accumulated a lot of dollars these past few months and he intended
to blow them, or at least a sizeable number of them. His credit card
was burning a hole in his pocket, as the expression went. However, he
wasn't going to rush into things. This had to be done correctly.
Too many a spree was played by ear. You started off with a few drinks,
fell in with some second rate mopsy and usually wound up in a third
rate groggery where you spent just as much as though you'd been in the
classiest joint in town. Came morning and you had nothing to show for
all the dollars that had been spent but a rum-head.
Thus, Si was vaguely aware, it had always been down through the
centuries since the Phoenecian sailor, back from his year-long trip to
the tin mines of Cornwall, blew his hard earned share of the voyage's
profits in a matter of days in the wine shops of Tyre. Nobody gets
quite so little for his money as that loneliest of all workers, he who
must leave his home for distant lands, returning only periodically and
usually with the salary of lengthy, weary periods of time to be spent
hurriedly in an attempt to achieve the pleasure and happiness so long
denied him.
Si was going to do it differently this time.
Nothing but the best. Wine, women, song, food, entertainment. The
works. But nothing but the best.
To start off, he dressed with great care in the honorable
retirement-rank suit he had so recently purchased. His space pin he
attached carefully to the lapel. That was a good beginning, he decided.
A bit of prestige didn't hurt you when you went out on the town. In
the Ultrawelfare State hardly one person in a hundred actually ever
performed anything of value to society. The efforts of most weren't
needed. Those few who did contribute were awarded honors, decorations,
titles.
Attired satisfactorily, Si double-checked to see that his credit
card was in his pocket. As an after-thought, he went over to the
auto-apartment's teevee-phone, flicked it on, held the card to the
screen and said, "Balance check, please."
In a moment, the teevee-phone's robot voice reported, "Ten shares of
Inalienable Basic. Twelve shares of Variable Basic, current value, four
thousand, two hundred and thirty-three dollars and sixty-two cents
apiece. Current cash credit, one thousand and eighty-four dollars." The
screen went dead.
One thousand and eighty-four dollars. That was plenty. He could safely
spend as much as half of it, if the spree got as lively as he hoped it
would. His monthly dividends were due in another week or so, and he
wouldn't have to worry about current expenses. Yes, indeedy, Si Pond
was as solvent as he had ever been in his thirty years.
He opened the small, closet-like door which housed his vacuum-tube
two-seater, and wedged himself into the small vehicle. He brought down
the canopy, dropped the pressurizer and considered the dial. Only one
place really made sense. The big city.
He considered for a moment, decided against the boroughs of Baltimore
and Boston, and selected Manhattan instead. He had the resources. He
might as well do it up brown.
He dialed Manhattan and felt the sinking sensation that presaged his
car's dropping to tube level. While it was being taken up by the robot
controls, being shuttled here and there preparatory to the shot to his
destination, he dialed the vehicle's teevee-phone for information on
the hotels of the island of the Hudson. He selected a swank hostelry
he'd read about and seen on the teevee casts of society and celebrity
gossip reporters, and dialed it on the car's destination dial.
"Nothing too good for ex-Space Pilot Si Pond," he said aloud.
The car hesitated for a moment, that brief hesitation before the
shot, and Si took the involuntary breath from which only heroes could
refrain. He sank back slowly into the seat. Moments passed, and the
direction of the pressure was reversed.
Manhattan. The shuttling began again, and one or two more traversing
sub-shots. Finally, the dash threw a green light and Si opened the
canopy and stepped into his hotel room.
A voice said gently, "If the quarters are satisfactory, please present
your credit card within ten minutes."
Si took his time. Not that he really needed it. It was by far the most
swank suite he had ever seen. One wall was a window of whatever size
the guest might desire and Si touched the control that dilated it to
the full. His view opened in such wise that he could see both the
Empire State Building Museum and the Hudson. Beyond the river stretched
the all but endless city which was Greater Metropolis.
He didn't take the time to flick on the menu, next to the auto-dining
table, nor to check the endless potables on the autobar list. All that,
he well knew, would be superlative. Besides, he didn't plan to dine
or do much drinking in his suite. He made a mock leer. Not unless he
managed to acquire some feminine companionship, that was.
He looked briefly into the swimming pool and bath, then flopped
himself happily onto the bed. It wasn't up to the degree of softness
he presently desired, and he dialed the thing to the ultimate in that
direction so that with a laugh he sank almost out of sight into the
mattress.
He came back to his feet, gave his suit a quick patting so that it
fell into press and, taking his credit card from his pocket, put it
against the teevee-phone screen and pressed the hotel button so that
registration could be completed.
For a moment he stood in the center of the floor, in thought. Take it
easy, Si Pond, take it all easy, this time. No throwing his dollars
around in second-class groggeries, no eating in automated luncheterias.
This time, be it the only time in his life, he was going to frolic in
the grand manner. No cloddy was Si Pond.
He decided a drink was in order to help him plan his strategy. A drink
at the hotel's famous Kudos Room where celebrities were reputed to be a
dime a dozen.
He left the suite and stepped into one of the elevators. He said,
"Kudos Room."
The auto-elevator murmured politely, "Yes, sir, the Kudos Room."
At the door to the famous rendezvous of the swankiest set, Si paused a
moment and looked about. He'd never been in a place like this, either.
However, he stifled his first instinct to wonder about what this was
going to do to his current credit balance with an inner grin and made
his way to the bar.
There was actually a bartender.
Si Pond suppressed his astonishment and said, offhand, attempting an
air of easy sophistication, "Slivovitz Sour."
"Yes, sir."
The drinks in the Kudos Room might be concocted by hand, but Si noticed
they had the routine teevee screens built into the bar for payment.
He put his credit card on the screen immediately before him when the
drink came, and had to quell his desire to dial for a balance check, so
as to be able to figure out what the Sour had cost him.
Well, this was something like it. This was the sort of thing he'd
dreamed about, out there in the great alone, seated in the confining
conning tower of his space craft. He sipped at the drink, finding it up
to his highest expectations, and then swiveled slightly on his stool to
take a look at the others present.
To his disappointment, there were no recognizable celebrities. None
that he placed, at least—top teevee stars, top politicians of the
Ultrawelfare State or Sports personalities.
He turned back to his drink and noticed, for the first time, the girl
who occupied the stool two down from him. Si Pond blinked. He blinked
and then swallowed.
"
Zo-ro-as-ter
," he breathed.
She was done in the latest style from Shanghai, even to the point of
having cosmetically duplicated the Mongolian fold at the corners of her
eyes. Every pore, but
every
pore, was in place. She sat with the easy
grace of the Orient, so seldom found in the West.
His stare couldn't be ignored.
She looked at him coldly, turned to the bartender and murmured, "A Far
Out Cooler, please, Fredric." Then deliberately added, "I thought the
Kudos Room was supposed to be exclusive."
There was nothing the bartender could say to that, and he went about
building the drink.
Si cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, "how about letting this one be
on me?"
Her eyebrows, which had been plucked and penciled to carry out her
Oriental motif, rose. "Really!" she said, drawing it out.
The bartender said hurriedly, "I beg your pardon, sir...."
The girl, her voice suddenly subtly changed, said, "Why, isn't that a
space pin?"
Si, disconcerted by the sudden reversal, said, "Yeah ... sure."
"Good Heavens, you're a spaceman?"
"Sure." He pointed at the lapel pin. "You can't wear one unless you
been on at least a Moon run."
She was obviously both taken back and impressed. "Why," she said,
"you're Seymour Pond, the pilot. I tuned in on the banquet they gave
you."
Si, carrying his glass, moved over to the stool next to her. "Call me
Si," he said. "Everybody calls me Si."
She said, "I'm Natalie. Natalie Paskov. Just Natalie. Imagine meeting
Seymour Pond. Just sitting down next to him at a bar. Just like that."
"Si," Si said, gratified. Holy Zoroaster, he'd never seen anything
like this rarified pulchritude. Maybe on teevee, of course, one of the
current sex symbols, but never in person. "Call me Si," he said again.
"I been called Si so long, I don't even know who somebody's talking to
if they say Seymour."
"I cried when they gave you that antique watch," she said, her tone
such that it was obvious she hadn't quite adjusted as yet to having
met him.
Si Pond was surprised. "Cried?" he said. "Well, why? I was kind of
bored with the whole thing. But old Doc Gubelin, I used to work under
him in the Space Exploration department, he was hot for it."
"
Academician
Gubelin?" she said. "You just call him
Doc
?"
Si was expansive. "Why, sure. In the Space Department we don't have
much time for formality. Everybody's just Si, and Doc, and Jim. Like
that. But how come you cried?"
She looked down into the drink the bartender had placed before her,
as though avoiding his face. "I ... I suppose it was that speech
Doctor Girard-Perregaux made. There you stood, so fine and straight in
your space-pilot uniform, the veteran of six exploration runs to the
planets...."
"Well," Si said modestly, "two of my runs were only to the Moon."
"... and he said all those things about man's conquest of space. And
the dream of the stars which man has held so long. And then the fact
that you were the last of the space pilots. The last man in the whole
world trained to pilot a space craft. And here you were, retiring."
Si grunted. "Yeah. That's all part of the Doc's scheme to get me to
take on another three runs. They're afraid the whole department'll be
dropped by the Appropriations Committee on this here Economic Planning
Board. Even if they can find some other patsy to train for the job,
it'd take maybe a year before you could even send him on a Moon hop.
So old man Gubelin, and Girard-Perregaux too, they're both trying to
pressure me into more trips. Otherwise they got a Space Exploration
Department, with all the expense and all, but nobody to pilot their
ships. It's kind of funny, in a way. You know what one of those
spaceships costs?"
"Funny?" she said. "Why, I don't think it's funny at all."
Si said, "Look, how about another drink?"
Natalie Paskov said, "Oh, I'd love to have a drink with you, Mr...."
"Si," Si said. He motioned to the bartender with a circular twist of
the hand indicating their need for two more of the same. "How come you
know so much about it? You don't meet many people who are interested
in space any more. In fact, most people are almost contemptuous, like.
Think it's kind of a big boondoggle deal to help use up a lot of
materials and all and keep the economy going."
Natalie said earnestly, "Why, I've been a space fan all my life. I've
read all about it. Have always known the names of all the space pilots
and everything about them, ever since I was a child. I suppose you'd
say I have the dream that Doctor Girard-Perregaux spoke about."
Si chuckled. "A real buff, eh? You know, it's kind of funny. I was
never much interested in it. And I got a darn sight less interested
after my first run and I found out what space cafard was."
She frowned. "I don't believe I know much about that."
Sitting in the Kudos Room with the most beautiful girl to whom he had
ever talked, Si could be nonchalant about the subject. "Old Gubelin
keeps that angle mostly hushed up and out of the magazine and newspaper
articles. Says there's enough adverse publicity about space exploration
already. But at this stage of the game when the whole ship's crammed
tight with this automatic scientific apparatus and all, there's
precious little room in the conning tower and you're the only man
aboard. The Doc says later on when ships are bigger and there's a whole
flock of people aboard, there won't be any such thing as space cafard,
but...." Of a sudden the right side of Si Pond's mouth began to tic
and he hurriedly took up his drink and knocked it back.
|
What caught Natalie's attention at the Kudos Room and prompted the chat with Si?
|
[
"The bartender introduced the two after serving them drinks at the same time.",
"She thought he was attractive enough and she was bored.",
"He had offered to buy her drinks all night.",
"She noticed his space pin."
] | 3 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
How did Trillium end up as a stow-away on the ship?
|
[
"She had been kidnapped by the men under the official command of the President of Earth.",
"She had fallen for the Earthmen and had chosen to run away with them.",
"She chose to show away so that the Venus women could bring their cause to the attention of Earth's President.",
"She had accidentally boarded the ship while looking for the shower."
] | 2 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
How had the fusion control points been adjusted?
|
[
"The control had reset itself in flight.",
"It had been moved by a scurrying three-tailed mouse of Venus",
"Trillium had adjusted it when she got too heated.",
"They were not correctly inspected and locked before blast-off."
] | 2 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
Had Trillium known the outcome of her stowing away, would she have likely still stowed away?
|
[
"Yes, because she was able to accomplish her mission.",
"Yes, because she had already shown that she was selfish and lonely.",
"No, because she was jeopardizing being condemned to a Uranus moon.",
"No, because she wasn't able to prove her point and was sent back to Venus."
] | 0 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
What were the hiding places selected by Trillium while stowing away?
|
[
"In the shower and behind the burner",
"By the lockers and behind the burner",
"Behind the burner and under the bunk",
"In the shower and under the bunk"
] | 3 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
Why were the Venus women transfixed by the Earthmen?
|
[
"They felt abandoned by their own men who had obsessions with war and little time for them.",
"The Earthmen were much more attractive and had real facial hair.",
"The women of Venus liked to break the rules.",
"Venus was solely occupied by women, leaving them no other option."
] | 0 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
What caused Trillium to be found in her hiding place the final time?
|
[
"The Earthmen couldn't stop staring at the bunk where she was because of their lust.",
"His Excellency saw her hiding under the bunk and recognized her immediately.",
"O'Rielly and Callahan had turned her in to the Old Woman in hopes of a reward.",
"A loud thump from under the bunk that caught the attention of the Old Woman."
] | 3 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
Why is it in the best interest for an Earthman to never lay eyes on a Venus dame?
|
[
"Because the Venus dames were thought to be only goofy tale set loose by some old space bum.",
"Because they would be so infatuated by the dame even knowing she would be their damnation.",
"Because they would be condemned to a Uranus moon for even looking at them.",
"Because of their dangerous nature."
] | 1 | true |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
Why did Callahan think Trillium was Berta when he first spotted her?
|
[
"Because Berta was Trillium's Grandmamma and she resembled her from a hundred and twenty-five years ago.",
"Because she introduced herself as so and led him to believe that was who she was.",
"Because all the Venus women have the same enchanting appearance.",
"Because only Berta was able to enter the ship."
] | 0 | false |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
How did Trillium sneak her way onto the ship?
|
[
"She disguised herself as a boy hustling bags through the ship.",
"She had an enchanted Earthman help her onto the ship.",
"She had sneaked on while no one was looking and went straight to the burner.",
"She disguised herself as a boy who was serving food in the quarters."
] | 0 | false |
IMAGE OF SPLENDOR
By LU KELLA
From Venus to Earth, and all the way between,
it was a hell of a world for men ... and
Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly particularly.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The intercom roared fit to blow O'Rielly back to Venus. "Burner Four!"
"On my way, sir!"
At the first flash of red on the bank of meters Apprentice Burnerman
O'Rielly had slammed the safety helmet on his head; he was already
throwing open the lock to the burner room. The hot, throbbing rumble
whipped around him and near crushed his breath away. Power! Power of
the universe trapped here and ready to destroy its captors given one
chance! Swiftly O'Rielly unlocked the controls and reset them. The
throbbing rumble changed tone.
Old Callahan's voice crackled now through the helmet's ear contact.
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly?"
"Fusion control two points low, sir."
O'Rielly wondered had Callahan passed out, was so long before the old
Burner Chief demanded hoarsely, "Didn't you lock them controls before
blast-off?"
"If every control hadn't been locked in correct setting," O'Rielly
answered from his own angry bewilderment, "the error would have
registered before blast-off—wouldn't it, sir?"
"So a control reset itself in flight, hey?"
"I don't know yet, sir."
"Well, Mr. O'Rielly, you better know before we orbit Earth!"
The icy knot in O'Rielly's stomach jerked tighter. A dozen burners on
this ship; why did something crazy have to happen to O'Rielly's? In a
hundred years, so the instructors—brisk females all—had told O'Rielly
in pre-flight school, no control had ever been known to slip. But one
had moved here. Not enough to cause serious trouble this far out from
Earth. On blast-down, though, with one jet below peak, the uneven
thrust could throw the ship, crash it, the whole lovely thing and all
aboard gone in a churning cloud.
Sweat pouring off him, O'Rielly prowled around his burner. Design of
the thing had been bossed by dames of course; what on Earth wasn't any
more? Anyway, nobody could get to a burner except through its watch
room. Anyone entered or left there, a bell clanged, lights flashed
and a meter registered beside the Burnerman's bunk and on the Burner
Chief's console up in the flight room full of beautifully efficient
officers. Ever since Venus blast-off O'Rielly had been in Four's watch
room. Nobody had passed through. O'Rielly knew it. Callahan knew it.
By now the Old Woman herself, Captain Millicent Hatwoody, had probably
inquired what was in charge of Burner Four.
Well, ma'am, O'Rielly searched every cranny where even a three-tailed
mouse of Venus could have stowed away. His first flight, and O'Rielly
saw himself washed out, busted to sweeper on the blast-off stands of
some God-forsaken satellite. He staggered back into his watch room. And
his brain was suddenly taken apart and slapped together again. Felt
that way.
She was sitting on his bunk. No three-tailed mouse. No Old Woman
either. Oh, she was a female human, though, this creature at which
O'Rielly stood gaping. Yes, ma'am!
"I was in your burner room." Her voice matched the rest of her, a blend
of loveliness unlike anything outside a guy's most secret dreams. "I
couldn't stand the heat any longer and I couldn't open that big door.
So I moved one of your controls a tiny bit. All the noise in there,
naturally you couldn't hear me walk out while your back was turned
resetting the control."
O'Rielly suddenly felt like turning her over his knee and whaling her
until she couldn't sit for a year. This, mind you, he felt in an age
where no Earth guy for a thousand years had dared raise so much as a
breath against woman's supremacy in all matters. That male character
trait, however, did not seem to be the overpowering reason why
O'Rielly, instead of laying violent hands upon this one's person, heard
himself saying in sympathetic outrage, "A shame you had to go to all
that bother to get out here!"
"You're so kind. But I'm afraid I became rather sticky and smelly in
there."
"They ought to cool the air in there with perfume! I'll drop a
suggestion in the Old Woman's box first chance I get."
"You're so thoughtful. And do you have bathing facilities?"
"That door right there. Oh, let me open it for you!"
"You're so sweet." Her big dark eyes glowed with such pure innocence
that O'Rielly could have torn down the universe and rebuilt it just for
her.
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly was floating on a pink cloud with heavenly music
in his head. Never felt so fine before. Except on the Venus layover
when he'd been roped into a dice game with a bunch of Venus lads who
had a jug to cheer one's parting with one's money.
A bell suddenly clanged fit to wake the dead while the overhead lights
flashed wildly. Only the watch room door. Only Callahan here now. Old
buzzard had a drooped nose like a pick, chin like a shovel.
When he talked he was like digging a hole in front of himself. "Well,
what about that control?"
"What control?"
"Your fusion control that got itself two points low!"
"Oh, that little thing."
Callahan said something through his teeth, then studied O'Rielly
sharply. "Hey, you been wetting your whistle on that Venus vino again?
Lemme smell your breath! Bah. Loaded yourself full of chlorophyll
again probably. All right, stand aside whilst I see your burner."
"Charmed to, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly said while bowing
gracefully.
"Higher than a swacked skunk's tail again," Callahan muttered, then
snapped back over his shoulder, "Use your shower!"
O'Rielly stood considering his shower door. Somehow he doubted that
Burner Chief Terrence Callahan's mood, or Captain Millicent Hatwoody's,
would be improved by knowledge of she who was in O'Rielly's shower now.
Not that the dear stowaway was less than charming. Quite the contrary.
Oh, very quite!
"You rockhead!" Only Callahan back from the burner. "Didn't I tell you
to shower the stink off yourself? Old Woman's taking a Venus bigwig
on tour the ship. Old Woman catches you like you been rassling skunks
she'll peel both our hides off. Not to mention what she'll do anyway
about your fusion control!"
"Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded courteously, "I have
been thinking."
"With what? Never mind, just keep on trying whilst I have a shower for
myself here." Wherewith Callahan reached hand for O'Rielly's shower
door.
"Venus dames," O'Rielly said dreamily, "don't boss anything, do they?"
Callahan yelped like he'd been bit in the pants by a big Jupiter ant.
"O'Rielly! You trying to get both of us condemned to a Uranus moon?"
Callahan also shot a wild look to the intercom switch. It was in OFF
position; the flight room full of fancy gold-lace petticoats could not
have overheard from here. Nevertheless Callahan's eyes rolled like the
devil was behind him with the fork ready. "O'Rielly, open your big ears
whilst for your own good and mine I speak of certain matters.
"Thousand years ago, it was, the first flight reached Venus. Guys
got one look at them dames. Had to bring some home or bust. So then
everybody on Earth got a look, mostly by TV only of course. That did
it. Every guy on Earth began blowing his fuse over them dames. Give up
the shirt off his back, last buck in the bank, his own Earth dame or
family—everything.
"Well, that's when Earth dames took over like armies of wild cats
with knots in their tails. Before the guys who'd brought the Venus
dames to Earth could say anything they was taken apart too small to
pick up with a blotter. Earth dames wound up by flying the Venus ones
back where they come from and serving notice if one ever set foot on
Earth again there wouldn't be enough left of Venus to find with an
electron microscope.
"Venus boys rared up and served notice that if Earth ever got any funny
notions, right away there wouldn't be enough Earth left to hide in an
atom's eyebrow. Touchy as hornets on a hot griddle, them Venus guys.
Crazier than bed bugs about war. Could smell a loose dollar a million
light years away too. Finagled around until they finally cooked up a
deal.
"No Venus dames allowed within fifty miles of their port. Earth guys
stay inside the high-voltage fence. Any dame caught trying to leave
Venus thrown to the tigers for supper. Same for any Earth guy caught
around a Venus dame. In return, Earth could buy practically everything
at bargain basement prices."
"Oh, I was shown the history films in pre-flight," O'Rielly said, still
dreamily. "But not a peek of any Venus dame."
"Pray heaven you'll never lay eyes on one nor have one get within ten
foot of you! Even though you'd know she'd be your damnation wouldn't
make a whit difference—you'd still act sappier than thirty-seven
angels flying on vino." Callahan suddenly stared at O'Rielly. "Holy
hollering saints!"
"Now, now, Burner Chief Callahan, sir," O'Rielly responded with an airy
laugh. "No Earth guy for a hundred twenty-five years been near one and
lived to tell it, has he?"
"So the whispers run," Callahan murmured with a queer flame dancing
into his eyes. "So the old whispers still run."
"Never a name, though. Never how it was done." O'Rielly snorted.
"Probably just a goofy tale set loose by some old space bum."
"Oh?" Callahan bristled up like a bad name had been bandied about.
"Seen them ditty bags Venus bigwigs have, ain't you? Some big enough to
stuff a cow in. Notice how nobody ever dares question a bigwig's bags,
even through customs? Just run 'em through the big Geiger that tells
whether there's any fusionable junk inside. Well, our boy got himself
one of them bags, stuffed himself inside and joined a bigwig's pile of
'em.
"Didn't pull it whilst on the Venus port during a layover either, when
a crew check would of turned him up missing. Pulled it on vacation.
Started on the Earth end. Made himself a pair of beards to paste on his
ears of course. Wove Jupiter wiggle worms in to keep the beards moving.
Wasn't like the real thing, but good enough to flimflam Venus guys."
With suddenly enlivened interest O'Rielly looked at Callahan. "Hey, how
come you know so much?"
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like waking from a trance; even groaned
to himself, something that sounded like, "Blabbering like I'd had
a nip myself—or one of them dillies was radiating nearby." Then
Callahan glared fit to drill holes in O'Rielly's head. "Look! I was
a full Burnerman before you was born. Been flying the spaces hundred
twenty-five years now. Had more chances to hear more—just hear more,
you hear! Only tried to clear your mind about Venus dames so you could
put your brain on your control mess. So now put it! If you ain't high
on vino and ain't been made nuts by a Venus dame, what answer do we
feed the Old Woman?"
"Search me," Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly responded cheerfully.
"Of all the loony apprentices I ever had to answer the Old Woman for!
Awp, lemme out where I can think of something to save me own neck at
least!"
Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from rolling on the deck with glee.
Old Callahan had been flimflammed for fair! The dear little stowaway
was saved! And O'Rielly would now think of grand ways to save her
lovely neck and his own forever.
O'Rielly's shower door, however, opened abruptly. O'Rielly had not
opened it. O'Rielly, however, suffered a cruel stab of dismay. Surely
his dear stowaway had been listening through the door. Why didn't she
have brains enough to stay hid until Callahan was gone!
At sight of her, of course, Callahan's eyes near popped from his old
head. "Berta!"
"Oh, I'm Trillium," she assured Callahan sweetly. "But Grandmamma's
name is Berta and people say I'm just like she was a hundred and
twenty-five years ago."
"Hah? What?" Callahan blinked like his brain had been taken apart and
was being slapped together again. "O'Rielly! Awp, you angel-faced
pirate, couldn't you hide her somewheres better than that? Shut up,
you don't have to explain to me, but God help the whole universe if we
don't flimflam the Old Woman!" With which ominous remark, rendered in
a zesty devil-may-care manner, however, Callahan threw himself into
O'Rielly's shower.
O'Rielly stood looking thoughtfully at lovely, womanly, exquisite
Trillium. Just like that, O'Rielly felt as sparkling of mind as a
spiral nebula. "My locker!" he crowed with inspiration and yanked open
the doors under his bunk. He glimpsed a black ditty bag, also the cap
and coverall uniform of a baggage boy.
"I threw them in there before you came on duty before blast-off,"
Trillium explained. "I knew the burner room would be warm."
Trillium—with her shape—passing as a boy hustling bags through this
ship. O'Rielly chortled as he tucked her under his bunk. "Now don't you
worry about another thing!"
"Oh, I'm not," she assured him happily. "Everything is going just the
way Grandmamma knew it would!"
O'Rielly's shower opened and Callahan, glowing like a young bucko,
bounced onto the bunk. "Well, did you hide her good this time? No,
don't tell me! I want to be surprised if the Old Woman ever finds her."
"If what old woman finds whom?" a voice like thin ice crackling wanted
to know.
The watch room's door had opened. Wouldn't think the Old Woman was a
day over seventy-five, let alone near two hundred. Cut of her uniform
probably lent a helping hand or three to the young snap of her figure.
Frosty blue of fancy hair-do, she was, though, and icy of eye as she
looked at O'Rielly and Callahan still lolling on the bunk.
Her voice was an iceberg exploding. "At attention!"
Never in his right mind would any crewman dare fail to come stiffly
erect the instant the Old Woman appeared. Behind her stood a colorfully
robed specimen of Venus man. Handsome as the devil himself. Fit to snap
lesser men in two with his highly bejeweled hands. Fuzzy beards trailed
from his ears and kept twitching lazily as he sneered at the spectacle
of two men meekly acknowledging the superiority of a woman.
She was fit to put frost on a hydrogen burner. "Mr. Callahan, I asked
you a question, did I not?"
"Believe you did, ma'am," Callahan responded cheerfully. "And the
answer is, ma'am, that Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly and me was
discussing—ah—matrimony, ma'am. Mr. Apprentice Burnerman O'Rielly
here is considering it, ma'am."
Wasn't too bad a fib. The more O'Rielly thought of Trillium, the more
ideas he got of doing things he'd never dreamt of before in his life.
Yes, ma'am!
"Wasting your time talking nonsense!" Old Woman's look was fit to
freeze O'Rielly's brain, then she gave Callahan the look. "I sent you
down here to find the answer to that fusion control slippage!"
"Oh, you'll have the best answer you ever heard of before long, ma'am!"
Callahan assured her heartily. "The subject of nonsense—I mean,
women—merely chanced to arise whilst we was scientifically analyzing
the control phenomenon, ma'am. Naturally I offered this innocent young
Burnerman the benefit of me long years of experience. Why," Callahan
said with a jaunty laugh, "dames mean nothing to me. Indeed 'twouldn't
bother me none if there wasn't one of the things left in the world!
Present company excepted, of course," Callahan hastened to say with a
courtly bow.
"Stay at attention!" Old Woman sniffed the air near Callahan's face,
then in O'Rielly's vicinity. "Smothered it with chlorophyll probably,"
she muttered through her teeth, "if it is that vino." Something
horrible as a plague flickered in her eyes, then the old ice was there
again. "Apprentice Burnerman, don't you know what your shower is for?
Then use it! Mr. Callahan, remain at attention while I inspect this
burner!" She tendered a cool glance at the Venus bigwig. "Care to join
me, Your Excellency?"
"May as well." His Excellency glanced at O'Rielly and Callahan much as
he might at a couple of worms. Could bet your last old sox no female
ever told any Venus man what to do.
The shower units were equipped so no Burnerman need be more than two
steps from his responsibility. To keep the Old Woman from possibly
blowing her gaskets completely, O'Rielly simply stepped in, shut the
door, flipped a switch and tingled as he was electronically cleansed
of person and clothes. By time he finished, the Old Woman and His
Excellency were already coming out of the burner room, dripping with
sweat.
Old Woman opened the shower with her customary commanding air. "You
first, Your Excellency."
"My dear Captain," His Excellency replied like a smoothly drawn dagger,
"always the lesser gender enjoys precedence."
No Earth dame ever admitted any guy was even equal to any female. Old
Woman, a prime symbol of her gender's superiority, whipped a razor edge
onto her own words. "Facilities of the Captain's quarters are more
satisfactory."
"No more so than those of the Ambassadorial Suite."
Seeming to grind her teeth, the Old O Woman turned abruptly to leave
O'Rielly's watch room. Was all O'Rielly could do to keep from busting
out laughing for joy.
Old Woman had been flimflammed for fair! Dear Trillium was saved! And
betwixt O'Rielly's grand brain and Callahan's great experience she'd be
happy forever.
A fine loud "thump," however, was now heard. Old Woman whirled back and
yanked open the doors under O'Rielly's bunk.
"Of all the sappy hiding places!" Callahan yelped, in surprise of
course.
"Trillium?" His Excellency bellowed as if stung by one of the
sabre-tailed hornets of his native planet. "Trillium!"
"Trillium," O'Rielly pleaded in loving anguish, "why do you have to
keep coming out of hiding just when nobody's going to find you?"
Her eyes merely became deep pools in which O'Rielly would have gladly
drowned himself if he could.
"There are rewards," the Old Woman said with the deadly coldness of
outer space, "for Earthmen found in a Venus woman's company, and for
her leaving her planet."
"Shut up!" His Excellency's ear beards were standing straight out
sideways. "I'll handle this!"
"May I remind His Excellency," the Old Woman snapped, "that I represent
Earth and her dominion of space gained by right of original flight!"
"May I remind the Captain," His Excellency declared fit to be heard
back to his planet, "that I am the Personal Ambassador of the President
of Venus and this thing can mean war!"
"Yes! War in which people will actually die!" As His Excellency paled
at that grisly remark, the Old Woman spoke through her teeth at
O'Rielly, Callahan and Trillium. "All right, come along!"
O'Rielly joined the death march gladly. He felt the way Callahan
looked: ready to wrap his arms around Trillium's brave loveliness and
protect it to his last breath of life.
Old Woman led the way to her office. Jabbed some buttons on her desk.
Panels on opposite walls lit up.
"Presidents of Earth and Venus, please," the Old Woman stated evenly.
"Interplanetary emergency."
Highly groomed flunkies appeared on the panels and were impersonally
pleasant.
"Madame President's office. She is in a Cabinet meeting."
"Mr. President's office. He is in personal command of our glorious war
efforts."
Old Woman sighed through her teeth. "Venus woman aboard this ship.
Stowaway. Rattle that around your belfries."
The flunkies' faces went slack with shock, then were replaced by a
blizzard of scrambled faces and torrents of incoherent voices.
Finally on the Earth panel appeared the famous classic features. "The
facts, if you please, Captain Hatwoody."
The Venus panel finally held steady on universally notorious features,
that were as fierce as an eagle's, in a fancy war helmet. "Trillium! My
own granddaughter? Impossible! Dimdooly," Mr. President roared at his
Excellency, "what's this nonsense?"
"Some loud creature is interfering," Madame President snapped with
annoyance.
"Blasted fools still have the circuits crossed," Mr. President swore.
"Some silly female cackling now!"
The parties in the panels saw each other now. Each one's left hand on a
desk moved toward a big red button marked, ROCKETS.
"So," Mr. President said evenly. "Another violation by your Earthmen."
"By your granddaughter, at least," Madame President replied coolly.
"An innocent child," Mr. President snapped, "obviously kidnapped by
those two idiotic Earthmen there!"
"Oh, no, Grandpapa," Trillium said swiftly; "I stole away all by
myself, and Mr. O'Rielly and Callahan have been very helpful."
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President's ear beards stood near straight up
as he roared, "You couldn't have stolen away by yourself! Trillium,
tell the truth!"
"Very well. Grandmamma told me how."
"Obviously Trillium's poor little brain has been drugged," His
Excellency Dimdooly declared. "Grandmamma Berta wouldn't know the first
thing about such things!"
"Impossible!" Grandpapa President agreed. "I've been married to her
for a hundred and twenty-four and a half years and she's the finest
rattle-brain I ever knew!"
"She learned," Trillium stated emphatically, "a hundred and twenty-five
years ago."
"Hundred twenty-five," Grandpapa president growled like a boiling
volcano. "The year some Earthman.... Never did catch the devil....
Berta? Impossible!"
Madame President's shapely finger now rested full on the button that
could launch the fleets of war rockets that had been pre-aimed for a
thousand years. "I'm afraid your Ambassador is unwelcome now," Madame
President stated coolly. "Your granddaughter's actions have every mark
of an invasion tactic by your government."
"What do you mean, her actions?" Grandpapa President's finger now lay
poised on the button that had been waiting a thousand years to blow
Earth out of the universe. "My grandchild was kidnapped by men under
your official command! Weren't you, Trillium dear?"
"No. One of us stowing away was the only way we Venus women could bring
our cause to the attention of Earth's President. If Earth will only
stop buying from Venus, you won't have any money to squander on your
wars any longer no matter what happens to we revolutionaries!"
"Revolutionaries? Such claptrap! And what's wrong with my wars? People
have to have something to keep their minds off their troubles! Nobody
around here gets hurt. Oh, maybe a few scratches here and there. But
nobody on Venus dies from the things any more."
"But Venus men are so excited all the time about going to war they
haven't time for us women. That's why we always radiated such a fatal
attraction for Earthmen. We want to be loved! We want our own men home
doing useful work!"
"Well, they do come home and do useful work! Couple weeks every ten
months. Proven to be a highly efficient arrangement."
"More boys to run off to your old wars and more girls to stay home and
be lonely!"
"Now you just listen to me, Trillium!" Grandpapa President was all
Venus manhood laying down the law. "That's the way things have been on
Venus for ten thousand years and all the women in the universe can't
change it!"
"I have been in constant contact with my Cabinet during these
conversations," Madame President said crisply. "Earth is terminating
all trade agreements with Venus as of this instant."
"What?" Grandpapa's beards near pulled his ears off. "It's not legal!
You can't get away with this!"
"Take your finger off that trigger, boy!" a heavenly voice similar to
Trillium's advised from the Venus panel.
Whereupon Grandpapa glared to one side. "Berta! What are you doing
here? I am deciding matters of the gravest interplanetary nature!"
"Were." Features more beautifully mature than Trillium's crowded onto
the panel too. "From now on I'm doing the deciding."
"Nonsense! You're only my wife!"
"And new President of Venus, elected by unanimous vote of all women."
"Impossible! The men run Venus! Nobody's turning this planet into
another Earth where a man can't even sneeze unless some woman says so!"
"Take him away, girls," Berta ordered coolly, whereupon her spouse was
yanked from view.
His bellows, however, could be heard yet. "Unhand me, you fool
creatures! Guards! Guards!"
"Save your breath," Berta advised him. "And while you're in the cooler,
enjoy this latest batch of surrender communiques. We women are in
control everywhere now."
"Dimmy," Trillium was saying firmly to His Excellency, "you have beat
around the bush with me long enough. Now say it!"
Dimdooly—the mighty, the lordly, who had sneered at the sight of mere
Earthmen kowtowing to a mere woman—swelled up fit to blow his gaskets,
then all the gas went out of him. His ear beards, however, still had
enough zip left to flutter like butterflies. "Yes, Trillium dear. I
love only you. Please marry me at your earliest convenience."
"Well, Grandmamma," Trillium said with a highly self-satisfied air, "it
works. And just like you said, Earthmen meant nothing once I knew we
Venus women had our own men in our power."
"Those crewmen there," Grandmamma President said, "seem to be proof
enough that we Venus women no longer radiate any threat to Earth's
tranquility."
Yes, ma'am, O'Rielly sure felt like proof of something all of a sudden.
Worse than the hangover from that crap game with Venus vino. He looked
away from Trillium and took a look at Callahan. Old guy looked away
from Grandmamma President like he was packing the second biggest
headache in history.
"Hmmmm, yes," Madame President of Earth observed. "Reactions agree
perfectly with the psychoanalytical research project we have been
conducting on the subject of the Venus female influence. Madame
President of Venus, congratulations on your victory!
"Long may the superior sex reign on Venus too! We shall be delighted to
receive an Ambassadoress to discuss a new trade treaty at your earliest
convenience."
"Thank you for cancelling the old trade agreements at the psychological
moment," Grandmamma President said cordially. "What with the
communications mixup, we managed to have the scenes on these panels
broadcast throughout all Venus. When the rug went out from under the
top man, the tide really turned in our favor. Now, Trillium, you take
over Dimmy's credentials."
"The Ambassadorial Suite, too," Madame President of Earth said
graciously. "Anything else now, Berta?"
"I should like," Grandmamma President Berta said charmingly, "that
Mr. O'Rielly and Mr. Callahan be suitably rewarded for assisting our
revolution better than they knew."
"Of course," Madame President of Earth was delighted to oblige. "No
doubt Captain Hatwoody knows what reward would satisfy their needs
best."
The Madame Presidents switched to a private circuit, Trillium dragged
Dimdooly off somewhere and the Old Woman eyed O'Rielly and Callahan.
Especially she eyed Callahan, like running chilled drills through his
old conniving brain. "I award the pair of you five minutes leisure
before returning to your stations."
"Oh, well," O'Rielly muttered, once he and Callahan were safely beyond
earshot, "could have been rewarded worse, I suppose."
"What you expect for being flimflammed by a foreign dame, the rings of
Saturn? Lucky we ain't programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the
crows for breakfast." Callahan's old pick-and-shovel face wore a little
grin like the cat that nobody could prove ate the canary.
"You—I mean, that Earth guy a hundred twenty-five years ago," O'Rielly
said in sudden thought. "If Venus dames wanted to be loved so bad, why
did Trillium's Grandmamma let him go?"
"Venus guys wasn't so busy playing war all the time," Callahan mumbled,
like to himself, "they'd of found out the answer centuries ago. Yep,
guess our boy was the only guy on Earth or Venus to find out and live.
Dames bossing both planets now, though, his old secret won't be one
much longer. Venus dames could of let it out centuries ago themselves
but didn't, just to spite Earth probably. Later, was part of organizing
to take over Venus, I guess."
O'Rielly still had memories of the way he had felt about Trillium
before her revolution. "All right, Callahan, why did 'our boy' leave
Grandmamma?"
"Yes, ma'am," Callahan sighed like he hadn't heard a word O'Rielly
said, "you could sweet-talk 'em, kiss 'em and hold 'em tighter'n
Billy-be-damned. And that's all."
"I'm not sure," O'Rielly said, "what you mean by, 'that's all.'"
"Anybody ever seen anybody but a Venus guy come built with ear beards?
Course not."
"But I thought our boy was wearing the best fakes ever."
"Ain't nothing can match the natural growed-on variety, no, ma'am.
Venus guy kisses a Venus dame, his beards grabs her roundst the ears."
"So what?"
"Tickles 'em, boy, tickles 'em!"
|
What were Callahan and O'Rielly awarded for assisting the revolution?
|
[
"They were allowed to visit with the women of Venus",
"They were allotted five minutes leisure before returning to their stations.",
"They were punished, rather than rewarded, and programmed to be hung, shot and thrown to the crows for breakfast.",
"Nothing, but they were spared from being condemned to a Uranus moon."
] | 1 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
What does the E.P. Locator detect?
|
[
"Level of Human Activity",
"Level of Probing",
"Level of Spinal Fluid",
"Level of Perception"
] | 3 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why was each inhabitant of the moon-town only referred to as their specific species rather than a distinct name?
|
[
"They were all distinct by their light, and only needed to be referred to as their species.",
"The population was much too large to name each creature.",
"The humans of moon-town felt no need to waste time in naming each living creature as they died off too quickly.",
"There was only one of each, therefore, they were called by their species."
] | 3 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Which fruit was NOT allowed to be tasted by the crew while visiting the moon-town?
|
[
"Apples",
"Oranges",
"Pomegranate",
"Grapes"
] | 2 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
What was thought to be used as an indication to settle the confusion between the crew and the two humans in moon-town?
|
[
"An inquisition about knowledge",
"A game of checkers",
"A contest of preternatural intellect",
"A physical test"
] | 1 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why was the cave the only place that was not visited?
|
[
"The cave was only a reflective illusion from the bright light.",
"The crew ran out of time but planned to examine it upon their next arrival",
"Adam, or Ha-Adamah, told the crew that it was much to dangerous as there were evil creatures living inside.",
"The serpent lives there and the crew was told that he was cranky."
] | 3 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
What was an indicator that Adam, or Ha-Adamah, was only playing a part while communicating with the crew?
|
[
"His eruption of laughter once the crew had left.",
"He told the Old Serpent that he needed to write him new lines.",
"His past involvement with show business.",
"He recalled his true name after the crew had left."
] | 1 | false |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why was the moon-town comically referred to as paradise by the priest?
|
[
"The woman did not speak the entire time they were there.",
"There was only one man, so less competition for the attention of the woman.",
"The unlimited supply of fresh fruit was perfect for weight loss.",
"There were less occupants, so less idiots to deal with."
] | 0 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why was the Old Serpent satisfied that the crew would be returning to try and take their paradise?
|
[
"He was happy to have new faces and needed the influx population to breed their new world.",
"He was hopeful for a portion of the sale money.",
"They needed to acquire their equipment for forming their new world.",
"They were hopeful for settlers as they needed someone to help them fertilize the land to keep the fruits plentiful."
] | 2 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
Why had the owners of Little Probe obtained the E.P. Locator at such a discounted rate?
|
[
"The readings were unclear as it had struggled with detecting E.P on worms.",
"The designer had no longer used it as it had not detected E.P. on himself.",
"It was a faulty machine and often shut off without notice.",
"It often produced an orange light meaning it was unsure of the results."
] | 1 | true |
IT WAS A DULL, ROUTINE LITTLE
WORLD. IT DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A
CITY. EVERYTHING IT HAD WAS
IN THE GARDEN
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The protozoic recorder chirped like a bird. Not only would there be
life traces on that little moon, but it would be a lively place. So
they skipped several steps in the procedure.
The chordata discerner read
Positive
over most of the surface. There
was spinal fluid on that orb, rivers of it. So again they omitted
several tests and went to the cognition scanner. Would it show Thought
on the body?
Naturally they did not get results at once, nor did they expect to; it
required a fine adjustment. But they were disappointed that they found
nothing for several hours as they hovered high over the rotation. Then
it came—clearly and definitely, but from quite a small location only.
"Limited," said Steiner, "as though within a pale. As though there were
but one city, if that is its form. Shall we follow the rest of the
surface to find another, or concentrate on this? It'll be twelve hours
before it's back in our ken if we let it go now."
"Let's lock on this one and finish the scan. Then we can do the rest of
the world to make sure we've missed nothing," said Stark.
There was one more test to run, one very tricky and difficult of
analysis, that with the Extraordinary Perception Locator. This was
designed simply to locate a source of superior thought. But this might
be so varied or so unfamiliar that often both the machine and the
designer of it were puzzled as to how to read the results.
The E. P. Locator had been designed by Glaser. But when the Locator
had refused to read
Positive
when turned on the inventor himself,
bad blood developed between machine and man. Glaser knew that he had
extraordinary perception. He was a much honored man in his field. He
told the machine so heatedly.
The machine replied, with such warmth that its relays chattered, that
Glaser did
not
have extraordinary perception; he had only ordinary
perception to an extraordinary degree. There is a
difference
, the
machine insisted.
It was for this reason that Glaser used that model no more, but built
others more amenable. And it was for this reason also that the owners
of Little Probe had acquired the original machine so cheaply.
And there was no denying that the Extraordinary Perception Locator (or
Eppel) was a contrary machine. On Earth it had read
Positive
on a
number of crack-pots, including Waxey Sax, a jazz tootler who could not
even read music. But it had also read
Positive
on ninety per cent of
the acknowledged superior minds of the Earth. In space it had been a
sound guide to the unusual intelligences encountered. Yet on Suzuki-Mi
it had read
Positive
on a two-inch-long worm, only one of them out of
billions. For the countless identical worms no trace of anything at all
was shown by the test.
So it was with mixed expectations that Steiner locked onto the area
and got a flick. He then narrowed to a smaller area (apparently one
individual, though this could not be certain) and got very definite
action. Eppel was busy. The machine had a touch of the ham in it, and
assumed an air of importance when it ran these tests.
Finally it signaled the result, the most exasperating result it ever
produces: the single orange light. It was the equivalent of the shrug
of the shoulders in a man. They called it the "You tell
me
light."
So among the intelligences there was at least one that might be
extraordinary, though possibly in a crackpot way. It is good to be
forewarned.
"Scan the remainder of the world, Steiner," said Stark, "and the rest
of us will get some sleep. If you find no other spot then we will go
down on that one the next time it is in position under us, in about
twelve hours."
"You don't want to visit any of the other areas first? Somewhere away
from the thoughtful creature?"
"No. The rest of the world may be dangerous. There must be a reason
that thought is in one spot only. If we find no others then we will go
down boldly and visit this."
So they all, except Steiner, went off to their bunks then: Stark, the
Captain; Gregory Gilbert, the executive officer; Wolfgang Langweilig,
the engineer; Casper Craig, super-cargo, tycoon and 51% owner of the
Little Probe, and F. R. Briton, S.J., a Jesuit priest who was linguist
and checker champion of the craft.
Dawn did not come to the moon-town. The Little Probe hovered stationary
in the light and the moon-town came up under the dawn. Then the Probe
went down to visit whatever was there.
"There's no town," said Steiner. "Not a building. Yet we're on the
track of the minds. There's nothing but a meadow and some boscage, a
sort of fountain or pool, and four streams coming out of it."
"Keep on towards the minds," said Stark. "They're our target."
"Not a building, not two sticks or stones placed together. That looks
like an Earth-type sheep there. And that looks like an Earth-lion,
I'm almost afraid to say. And those two ... why, they could well be
Earth-people. But with a difference. Where is that bright light coming
from?"
"I don't know, but they're right in the middle of it. Land here. We'll
go to meet them at once. Timidity has never been an efficacious tool
with us."
Well, they were people. And one could only wish that all people were
like them. There was a man and a woman, and they were clothed either
in very bright garments or in no garments at all, but only in a very
bright light.
"Talk to them, Father Briton," said Stark. "You are the linguist."
"Howdy," said the priest.
He may or may not have been understood, but the two of them smiled at
him, so he went on.
"Father Briton from Philadelphia," he said, "on detached service. And
you, my good man, what is your handle, your monicker, your tag?"
"Ha-Adamah," said the man.
"And your daughter, or niece?"
It may be that the shining man frowned momentarily at this; but the
woman smiled, proving that she was human.
"The woman is named Hawwah," said the man. "The sheep is named sheep,
the lion is named lion, the horse is named horse and the hoolock is
named hoolock."
"I understand. It is possible that this could go on and on. How is it
that you use the English tongue?"
"I have only one tongue; but it is given to us to be understood by all;
by the eagle, by the squirrel, by the ass, by the English."
"We happen to be bloody Yankees, but we use a borrowed tongue. You
wouldn't have a drink on you for a tubful of thirsty travellers, would
you?"
"The fountain."
"Ah—I see."
But the crew all drank of the fountain to be sociable. It was water,
but water that excelled, cool and with all its original bubbles like
the first water ever made.
"What do you make of them?" asked Stark.
"Human," said Steiner. "It may even be that they are a little more than
human. I don't understand that light that surrounds them. And they seem
to be clothed, as it were, in dignity."
"And very little else," said Father Briton, "though that light trick
does serve a purpose. But I'm not sure they'd pass in Philadelphia."
"Talk to them again," said Stark. "You're the linguist."
"That isn't necessary here, Captain. Talk to them yourself."
"Are there any other people here?" Stark asked the man.
"The two of us. Man and woman."
"But are there any others?"
"How would there be any others? What other kind of people could there
be than man and woman?"
"But is there more than one man or woman?"
"How could there be more than one of anything?"
The captain was a little puzzled by this, but he went on doggedly:
"Ha-Adamah, what do you think that we are? Are we not people?"
"You are not anything till I name you. But I will name you and then
you can be. You are named Captain. He is named Priest. He is named
Engineer. He is named Flunky."
"Thanks a lot," said Steiner.
"But are we not people?" persisted Captain Stark.
"No. We are the people. There are no people but two. How could there be
other people?"
"And the damnest thing about it," muttered Langweilig, "is, how are you
going to prove him wrong? But it does give you a small feeling."
"Can we have something to eat?" asked the Captain.
"Pick from the trees," said Ha-Adamah, "and then it may be that you
will want to sleep on the grass. Being not of human nature (which does
not need sleep or rest), it may be that you require respite. But you
are free to enjoy the garden and its fruits."
"We will," said Captain Stark.
They wandered about the place, but they were uneasy. There were the
animals. The lion and lioness were enough to make one cautious, though
they offered no harm. The two bears had a puzzling look, as though they
wanted either to frolic with you or to mangle you.
"If there are only two people here," said Casper Craig, "then it may be
that the rest of the world is not dangerous at all. It looked fertile
wherever we scanned it, though not so fertile as this central bit. And
those rocks would bear examining."
"Flecked with gold, and possibly with something else," said Stark. "A
very promising site."
"And everything grows here," added Steiner. "Those are Earth-fruits and
I never saw finer. I've tasted the grapes and plums and pears. The figs
and dates are superb, the quince is as flavorsome as a quince can be,
the cherries are excellent. And I never did taste such oranges. But I
haven't yet tried the—" and he stopped.
"If you're thinking what I'm afraid to think," said Gilbert, "then it
will be the test at least: whether we're having a pleasant dream or
whether this is reality. Go ahead and eat one."
"I won't be the first to eat one. You eat."
"Ask him first. You ask him."
"Ha-Adamah, is it allowed to eat the apples?"
"Certainly. Eat. It is the finest fruit in the garden."
"Well, the analogy breaks down there," said Stark. "I was almost
beginning to believe in the thing. But if it isn't that, then what.
Father Briton, you are the linguist, but in Hebrew does not Ha-Adamah
and Hawwah mean—?"
"Of course they do. You know that as well as I."
"I was never a believer. But would it be possible for the exact same
proposition to maintain here as on Earth?"
"All things are possible."
And it was then that Ha-Adamah, the shining man, gave a wild cry: "No,
no. Do not approach it. It is not allowed to eat of that one!"
It was the pomegranate tree, and he was warning Langweilig away from it.
"Once more, Father," said Stark, "you should be the authority; but does
not the idea that it was the apple that was forbidden go back only to a
medieval painting?"
"It does. The name of the fruit is not mentioned in Genesis. In Hebrew
exegesis, however, the pomegranate is usually indicated."
"I thought so. Question the man further, Father. This is too
incredible."
"It is a little odd. Adam, old man, how long have you been here?"
"Forever less six days is the answer that has been given to me. I never
did understand the answer, however."
"And have you gotten no older in all that time?"
"I do not understand what 'older' is. I am as I have been from the
beginning."
"And do you think that you will ever die?"
"To die I do not understand. I am taught that it is a property of
fallen nature to die, and that does not pertain to me or mine."
"And are you completely happy here?"
"Perfectly happy according to my preternatural state. But I am taught
that it might be possible to lose that happiness, and then to seek it
vainly through all the ages. I am taught that sickness and ageing and
even death could come if this happiness were ever lost. I am taught
that on at least one other unfortunate world it has actually been lost."
"Do you consider yourself a knowledgeable man?"
"Yes, since I am the only man, and knowledge is natural to man. But I
am further blessed. I have a preternatural intellect."
Then Stark cut in once more: "There must be some one question you could
ask him, Father. Some way to settle it. I am becoming nearly convinced."
"Yes, there is a question that will settle it. Adam, old man, how about
a game of checkers?"
"This is hardly the time for clowning," said Stark.
"I'm not clowning, Captain. How about it, Adam? I'll give you choice of
colors and first move."
"No. It would be no contest. I have a preternatural intellect."
"Well, I beat a barber who was champion of Germantown. And I beat the
champion of Morgan County, Tennessee, which is the hottest checker
center on Earth. I've played against, and beaten, machines. But I
never played a preternatural mind. Let's just set up the board, Adam,
and have a go at it."
"No. It would be no contest. I would not like to humble you."
They were there for three days. They were delighted with the place.
It was a world with everything, and it seemed to have only two
inhabitants. They went everywhere except into the big cave.
"What is there, Adam?" asked Captain Stark.
"The great serpent lives there. I would not disturb him. He has long
been cranky because plans he had for us did not materialize. But we
are taught that should ever evil come to us, which it cannot if we
persevere, it will come by him."
They learned no more of the real nature of the sphere in their time
there. Yet all but one of them were convinced of the reality when they
left. And they talked of it as they took off.
"A crowd would laugh if told of it," said Stark, "but not many would
laugh if they had actually seen the place, or them. I am not a gullible
man, but I am convinced of this: that this is a pristine and pure world
and that ours and all the others we have visited are fallen worlds.
Here are the prototypes of our first parents before their fall. They
are garbed in light and innocence, and they have the happiness that
we have been seeking for centuries. It would be a crime if anyone
disturbed that happiness."
"I too am convinced," said Steiner. "It is Paradise itself, where the
lion lies down with the lamb, and where the serpent has not prevailed.
It would be the darkest of crimes if we or others should play the part
of the serpent, and intrude and spoil."
"I am probably the most skeptical man in the world," said Casper Craig
the tycoon, "but I do believe my eyes. I have been there and seen it.
It is indeed an unspoiled Paradise; and it would be a crime calling to
the wide heavens for vengeance for anyone to smirch in any way that
perfection.
"So much for that. Now to business. Gilbert, take a gram: Ninety
Million Square Miles of Pristine Paradise for Sale or Lease. Farming,
Ranching, exceptional opportunities for Horticulture. Gold, Silver,
Iron, Earth-Type Fauna. Terms. Special Rates for Large Settlement
Parties. Write, Gram, or call in person at any of our planetary offices
as listed below. Ask for Brochure—Eden Acres Unlimited."
Down in the great cave that Old Serpent, a two-legged one among whose
names were "Snake-Oil Sam," spoke to his underlings:
"It'll take them fourteen days to get back with the settlers. We'll
have time to overhaul the blasters. We haven't had any well-equipped
settlers for six weeks. It used to be we'd hardly have time to strip
and slaughter and stow before there was another batch to take care of."
"I think you'd better write me some new lines," said Adam. "I feel like
a goof saying those same ones to each bunch."
"You are a goof, and therefore perfect for the part. I was in show
business long enough to know never to change a line too soon. I did
change Adam and Eve to Ha-Adamah and Hawwah, and the apple to the
pomegranate. People aren't becoming any smarter—but they are becoming
better researched, and they insist on authenticity.
"This is still a perfect come-on here. There is something in human
nature that cannot resist the idea of a Perfect Paradise. Folks will
whoop and holler to their neighbors to come in droves to spoil and mar
it. It isn't greed or the desire for new land so much—though that is
strong too. Mainly it is the feverish passion to befoul and poison what
is unspoiled. Fortunately I am sagacious enough to take advantage of
this trait. And when you start to farm a new world on a shoestring you
have to acquire your equipment as you can."
He looked proudly around at the great cave with its mountains and tiers
of materials, heavy machinery of all sorts, titanic crates of foodstuff
space-sealed; wheeled, tracked, propped, vaned and jetted vehicles; and
power packs to run a world.
He looked at the three dozen space ships stripped and stacked, and at
the rather large pile of bone-meal in one corner.
"We will have to have another lion," said Eve. "Bowser is getting old,
and Marie-Yvette abuses him and gnaws his toes. And we do have to have
a big-maned lion to lie down with the lamb."
"I know it, Eve. The lion is a very important prop. Maybe one of the
crackpot settlers will bring a new lion."
"And can't you mix another kind of shining paint? This itches. It's
hell."
"I'm working on it."
Casper Craig was still dictating the gram:
"Amazing quality of longevity seemingly inherent in the locale. Climate
ideal. Daylight or half-light. All twenty-one hours from Planet
Delphina and from Sol. Pure water for all industrial purposes. Scenic
and storied. Zoning and pre-settlement restrictions to insure congenial
neighbors. A completely planned globular settlement in a near arm of
our own galaxy. Low taxes and liberal credit. Financing our specialty—"
"And you had better have an armed escort when you return," said Father
Briton.
"Why in cosmos would we want an armed escort?"
"It's as phony as a seven-credit note!"
"You, a man of the cloth doubt it? And us ready skeptics convinced by
our senses? Why do you doubt?"
"It is only the unbelieving who believe so easily in obvious frauds.
Theologically unsound, dramaturgically weak, philologically impossible,
zoologically rigged, salted conspicuously with gold and shot through
with anachronisms. And moreover he was afraid to play me at checkers."
"What?"
"If I have a preternatural intellect I wouldn't be afraid of a game of
checkers with anyone. Yet there was an unusual mind there somewhere; it
was just that he chose not to make our acquaintance personally."
"They looked at the priest thoughtfully.
"But it was Paradise in one way," said Steiner at last.
"How?"
"All the time we were there the woman did not speak."
|
What was determined to have created the bright light in the moon-town?
|
[
"The shining paint that was applied to the bodies of Adam and Eve.",
"Artificial lighting that helped the fruits to produce more.",
"The lights from the ship that were not turned off.",
"Constant moon-light that failed to dim in order to help the fruits grow"
] | 0 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
What was special or impressive about Gertrude?
|
[
"Her outrageous temperment",
"She was an extreme rarity.",
"Her extraordinary size and young age",
"She was exceptionally talented"
] | 1 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why was Gertrude continuously screaming?
|
[
"She was cramped in a much too small space.",
"She missed her family.",
"She was near starving.",
"She was desperate for a mate"
] | 3 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
How were Jig and Bucky attacked by the Vapor snakes?
|
[
"They had been released by someone on purpose",
"Bucky had released them while inebriated",
"They had gone into the wrong enclosure.",
"They had escaped their tanks in search of food."
] | 0 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why did the crew mind that the cave-cat had kittens?
|
[
"They didn't perform well while they were small.",
"They were too dangerous to keep onboard",
"They had no food for more mouths to feed",
"One had only four legs"
] | 3 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
What did the Nahali people do in side-shows as their talent?
|
[
"Performed with the dangerous Vapor snakes",
"Performed tricks with the electric power the held in their bodies",
"Swallowed electricty and performed with currents",
"Their appearance alone was their performance, as they had triangular mouths and scaled hides"
] | 1 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why was Kapper in such a state of disbelief when Bucky and Jig found him?
|
[
"He was frantically searching for the male Cansin he had found",
"He had lost all his animals and was desperate to find them",
"He had been attacked by the Vapor snakes",
"He was being poisoned."
] | 3 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
What did Jig and Bucky promise Kapper?
|
[
"That they would find a way to save the Circus",
"That they would be able to save him",
"That they would take the cansin back.",
"That they would not make the deal with Beamish"
] | 2 | false |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why did Jig and Bucky rarely come in through the front door?
|
[
"They wanted to avoid the screams of Gertrude",
"They wanted to avoid the debt collectors",
"They preferred the back entrance as to be closer to the action",
"They wanted to avoid the Vapor snakes"
] | 1 | true |
The Blue Behemoth
By LEIGH BRACKETT
Shannon's Imperial Circus was a jinxed
space-carny leased for a mysterious tour
of the inner worlds. It made a one-night
pitch on a Venusian swamp-town—to
find that death stalked it from the
jungle in a tiny ball of flame.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Bucky Shannon leaned forward across the little hexagonal table. He
knocked over the pitcher of
thil
, but it didn't matter. The pitcher
was empty. He jabbed me in the breastbone with his forefinger, not
very hard. Not hard enough to jar the ribs clean loose, just enough to
spring them.
"We," he said, "are broke. We are finished, through. Washed up and
down the drain." He added, as an afterthought, "Destitute."
I looked at him. I said sourly, "You're kidding!"
"Kidding." Shannon put his elbows on the table and peered at me through
a curtain of very blond hair that was trying hard to be red. "He says
I'm kidding! With Shannon's Imperial Circus, the Greatest Show in
Space, plastered so thick with attachments...."
"It's no more plastered than you are." I was sore because he'd been a
lot quicker grabbing the pitcher. "The Greatest Show in Space. Phooey!
I've wet-nursed Shannon's Imperial Circus around the Triangle for
eleven years, and I know. It's lousy, it's mangy, it's broken-down!
Nothing works, from the ship to the roustabouts. In short, it stinks!"
I must have had the pitcher oftener than I thought. Nobody insults
Buckhalter Shannon's Imperial Circus to Buckhalter Shannon's face
unless he's tired and wants a long rest in a comfy fracture-frame.
Shannon got up. He got up slowly. I had plenty of time to see his
grey-green eyes get sleepy, and hear the quarter-Earth-blood Martian
girl wailing about love over by the battered piano, and watch the
slanting cat-eyes of the little dark people at the tables swing round
toward us, pleased and kind of hungry.
I had plenty of time to think how I only weigh one-thirty-seven to
Shannon's one-seventy-five, and how I'm not as young as I used to be.
I said, "Bucky. Hold on, fella. I...."
Somebody said, "Excuse me, gentlemen. Is one of you Mister Buckhalter
Shannon?"
Shannon put his hands down on his belt. He closed his eyes and smiled
pleasantly and said, very gently:
"Would you be collecting for the feed bill, or the fuel?"
I shot a glance at the newcomer. He'd saved me from a beating, even if
he was a lousy bill-collecter; and I felt sorry for him. Bucky Shannon
settled his shoulders and hips like a dancer.
The stranger was a little guy. He even made me look big. He was dressed
in dark-green synthesilk, very conservative. There was a powdering of
grey in his hair and his skin was pink, soft, and shaved painfully
clean. He had the kind of a face that nice maiden-ladies will trust
with their last dime. I looked for his strong-arm squad.
There didn't seem to be any. The little guy looked at Shannon with pale
blue eyes like a baby, and his voice was softer than Bucky's.
He said, "I don't think you understand."
I felt cold, suddenly, between the shoulders. Somebody scraped a chair
back. It sounded like he'd ripped the floor open, it was so quiet. I
got my brassies on, and my hands were sweating. Bucky Shannon sighed,
and let his fist start traveling, a long, deceptive arc.
Then I saw what the little guy was holding in his hand.
I yelled and knocked the table over into Bucky. It made a lot of noise.
It knocked him sideways and down, and the little dark men jumped up,
quivering and showing their teeth. The Martian girl screamed.
Bucky heaved the table off his lap and cursed me. "What's eating you,
Jig? I'm not going to hurt him."
"Shut up," I said. "Look what he's got there. Money!"
The little guy looked at me. He hadn't turned a hair. "Yes," he said.
"Money. Quite a lot of it. Would you gentlemen permit me to join you?"
Bucky Shannon got up. He grinned his pleasantest grin. "Delighted. I'm
Shannon. This is Jig Bentley, my business manager." He looked down at
the table. "I'm sorry about that. Mistaken identity."
The little guy smiled. He did it with his lips. The rest of his face
stayed placid and babyish, almost transparent. I realized with a start
that it wasn't transparent at all. It was the most complete dead-pan I
ever met, and you couldn't see into those innocent blue eyes any more
than you could see through sheet metal.
I didn't like him. I didn't like him at all. But he had money. I said,
"Howdy. Let's go find a booth. These Marshies make me nervous, looking
like hungry cats at a mouse-hole."
The little guy nodded. "Excellent idea. My name is Beamish. Simon
Beamish. I wish to—ah—charter your circus."
I looked at Bucky. He looked hungrier than the Marshies did. We didn't
say anything until we got Beamish into a curtained booth with a fresh
pitcher of
thil
on the table. Then I cleared my throat.
"What exactly did you have in mind, Mr. Beamish?"
Beamish sipped his drink, made a polite face, and put it down. "I have
independent means, gentlemen. It has always been my desire to lighten
the burden of life for those less fortunate...."
Bucky got red around the ears. "Just a minute," he murmured, and
started to get up. I kicked him under the table.
"Shut up, you lug. Let Mister Beamish finish."
He sat down, looking like a mean dog waiting for the postman. Beamish
ignored him. He went on, quietly,
"I have always held that entertainment, of the right sort, is the most
valuable aid humanity can have in its search for the alleviation of
toil and boredom...."
I said, "Sure, sure. But what was your idea?"
"There are many towns along the Venusian frontiers where no
entertainment of the—
proper
sort has been available. I propose to
remedy that. I propose to charter your circus, Mister Shannon, to make
a tour of several settlements along the Tehara Belt."
Bucky had relaxed. His grey-green eyes began to gleam. He started to
speak, and I kicked him again.
"That would be expensive, Mister Beamish," I said. "We'd have to cancel
several engagements...."
He looked at me. I was lying, and he knew it. But he said,
"I quite understand that. I would be prepared...."
The curtains were yanked back suddenly. Beamish shut up. Bucky and I
glared at the head and shoulders poking in between the drapes.
It was Gow, our zoo-man—a big, ugly son-of-a-gun from a Terran
colony on Mercury. I was there once. Gow looks a lot like the
scenery—scowling, unapproachable, and tough. His hands, holding the
curtains apart, had thick black hair on them and were not much larger
than the hams of a Venusian swamp-rhino.
He said, "Boss, Gertrude's actin' up again."
"Gertrude be blowed," growled Bucky. "Can't you see I'm busy?"
Gow's black eyes were unpleasant. "I'm tellin' you, Boss, Gertrude
ain't happy. She ain't had the right food. If something...."
I said, "That'll all be taken care of, Gow. Run along now."
He looked at me like he was thinking it wouldn't take much timber to
fit me for a coffin. "Okay! But Gertrude's unhappy. She's lonesome,
see? And if she don't get happier pretty soon I ain't sure your tin-pot
ship'll hold her."
He pulled the curtains to and departed. Bucky Shannon groaned. Beamish
cleared his throat and said, rather stiffly,
"Gertrude?"
"Yeah. She's kind of temperamental." Bucky took a quick drink. I
finished for him.
"She's the star attraction of our show, Mr. Beamish. A real blue-swamp
Venusian
cansin
. The only other one on the Triangle belongs to Savitt
Brothers, and she's much smaller than Gertrude."
She was also much younger, but I didn't go into that. Gertrude may be
a little creaky, but she's still pretty impressive. I only hoped she
wouldn't die on us, because without her we'd have a sicker-looking
circus than even I could stand.
Beamish looked impressed. "A
cansin
. Well, well! The mystery
surrounding the origin and species of the
cansin
is a fascinating
subject. The extreme rarity of the animal...."
We were getting off the subject. I said tactfully, "We'd have to have
at least a hundred U.C.'s."
It was twice what we had any right to ask. I was prepared to dicker.
Beamish looked at me with that innocent dead pan. For a fraction of a
second I thought I saw something back of his round blue eyes, and my
stomach jumped like it was shot. Beamish smiled sweetly.
"I'm not much of a bargainer. One hundred Universal Credits will be
agreeable to me." He dragged out a roll as big as my two fists, peeled
off half a dozen credit slips, and laid them on the table.
"By way of a retainer, gentleman. My attorney and I will call on you in
the morning with a contract and itinerary. Good night."
We said good night, trying not to drool. Beamish went away. Bucky made
grab for the money, but I beat him to it.
"Scram," I said. "There are guys waiting for this. Big guys with clubs.
Here." I gave him a small-denomination slip I'd been holding out. "We
can get lushed enough on this."
Shannon has a good vocabulary. He used it. When he got his breath back
he said suddenly,
"Beamish is pulling some kind of a game."
"Yeah."
"It may be crooked."
"Sure. And he may be screwball and on the level. For Pete's sake!" I
yelled. "You want to sit here till we all dry up and blow away?"
Shannon looked at me, kind of funny. He looked at the bulge in my tunic
where the roll was. He raked back his thick light hair.
"Yeah," he said. "I hope there'll be enough left to bribe the jury." He
poked his head outside. "Hey, boy! More
thildatum
!"
It was pretty late when we got back to the broken-down spaceport where
Shannon's Imperial Circus was crouching beneath its attachments. Late
as it was, they were waiting for us. About twenty of them, sitting
around and smoking and looking very ugly.
It was awfully lonesome out there, with the desert cold and restless
under the two moons. There's a smell to Mars, like something dead and
dried long past decay, but still waiting. An unhappy smell. The blown
red dust gritted in my teeth.
Bucky Shannon walked out into the glare of the light at the entrance to
the roped-off space around the main lock. He was pretty steady on his
feet. He waved and said, "Hiya, boys."
They got up off the steps, and the packing cases, and came toward us. I
grinned and got into my brassies. We felt we owed those boys a lot more
than money. It grates on a man's pride to have to sneak in and out of
his own property through the sewage lock. This was the first time in
weeks we'd come in at the front door.
I waved the money in their faces. That stopped them. Very solemnly,
Bucky and I checked the bills, paid them, and pocketed the receipts.
Bucky yawned and stretched sleepily.
"Now?" he said.
"Now," I said.
We had a lot of fun. Some of the boys inside the ship came out to join
in. We raised a lot of dust and nobody got killed, quite. We all went
home happy. They had their money, and we had their blood.
The news was all over the ship before we got inside. The freaks and the
green girl from Tethys who could roll herself like a hoop, and Zurt the
muscle man from Jupiter, and all the other assorted geeks and kinkers
and joeys that make up the usual corny carnie were doing nip-ups in the
passageways and drooling over the thought of steer and toppings.
Bucky Shannon regarded them possessively, wiping blood from his nose.
"They're good guys, Jig. Swell people. They stuck by me, and I've
rewarded them."
I said, "Sure," rather sourly. Bucky hiccoughed.
"Let's go see Gertrude."
I didn't want to see Gertrude. I never got over feeling funny going
into the brute tank, especially at night or out in space. I'm a city
guy, myself. The smell and sound of wildness gives me goose bumps. But
Bucky was looking stubborn, so I shrugged.
"Okay. But just for a minute. Then we go beddy-bye."
"You're a pal, Jif. Bes' li'l' guy inna worl'...."
The fight had just put the topper on him. I was afraid he'd fall down
the ladder and break his neck. That's why I went along. If I hadn't....
Oh, well, what's a few nightmares among friends?
It was dark down there in the tank. Way off at the other end, there was
a dim glow. Gow was evidently holding Gertrude's hand. We started down
the long passageway between the rows of cages and glassed-in tanks and
compression units.
Our footsteps sounded loud and empty on the iron floor. I wasn't
near as happy as Shannon, and my skin began to crawl a little. It's
the smell, I think; rank and sour and wild. And the sound of them,
breathing and rustling in the dark, with the patient hatred walled
around them as strong as the cage bars.
Bucky Shannon lurched against me suddenly. I choked back a yell, and
then wiped the sweat off my forehead and cursed. The scream came again.
A high, ragged, whistling screech like nothing this side of hell,
ripping through the musty darkness. Gertrude, on the wailing wall.
It had been quiet. Now every brute in the place let go at the same
time. My stomach turned clear over. I called Gertrude every name I
could think of, and I couldn't hear myself doing it. Presently a great
metallic clash nearly burst my eardrums, and the beasts shut up. Gow
had them nicely conditioned to that gong.
But they didn't quiet down. Not really. They were uneasy. You can feel
them inside you when they're uneasy. I think that's why I'm scared of
them. They make me feel like I'm not human as I thought—like I wanted
to put my back-hair up and snarl. Yeah. They were uneasy that night,
all of a sudden....
Gow glared at us as we came up into the lantern light. "She's gettin'
worse," he said. "She's lonesome."
"That's tough," said Bucky Shannon. His grey-green eyes looked like an
owl's. He swayed slightly. "That's sure tough." He sniffled.
I looked at Gertrude. Her cage is the biggest and strongest in the tank
and even so she looked as though she could break it open just taking a
deep breath. I don't know if you've ever seen a
cansin
. There's only
two of them on the Triangle. If you haven't, nothing I can say will
make much difference.
They're what the brain gang calls an "end of evolution." Seems old
Dame Nature had an idea that didn't jell. The
cansins
were pretty
successful for a while, it seems, but something gummed up the works and
now there's only a few left, way in the deep-swamp country, where even
the Venusians hardly ever go. Living fossils.
I wouldn't know, of course, but Gertrude looks to me like she got stuck
some place between a dinosaur and a grizzly bear, with maybe a little
bird blood thrown in. Anyway, she's big.
I couldn't help feeling sorry for her. She was crouched in the cage
with her hands—yeah, hands—hanging over her knees and her snaky head
sunk into her shoulders, looking out. Just looking. Not at anything.
Her eyes were way back in deep horny pits, like cold green fire.
The lantern light was yellow on her blue-black skin, but it made the
mane, or crest, of coarse wide scales that ran from between her eyes
clear down to her flat, short tail, burn all colors. She looked like
old Mother Misery herself, from way back before time began.
Gow said softly, "She wants a mate. And somebody better get her one."
Bucky Shannon sniffled again. I said irritably, "Be reasonable, Gow!
Nobody's ever seen a male
cansin
. There may not even be any."
Gertrude screamed again. She didn't move, not even to raise her head.
The sadness just built up inside her until it had to come out. That
close, the screech was deafening, and it turned me all limp and cold
inside. The loneliness, the sheer stark, simple pain....
Bucky Shannon began to cry. I snarled, "You'll have to snap her out of
this, Gow. She's driving the rest of 'em nuts."
He hammered on his gong, and things quieted down again. Gow stood
looking out over the tank, sniffing a little, like a hound. Then he
turned to Gertrude.
"I saved her life," he said. "When we bought her out of Hanak's wreck
and everybody thought she was too hurt to live, I saved her. I know
her. I can do things with her. But this time...."
He shrugged. He was huge and tough and ugly, and his voice was like a
woman's talking about a sick child.
"This time," he said, "I ain't sure."
"Well for Pete's sake, do what you can. We got a charter, and we need
her." I took Shannon's arm. "Come to bed, Bucky darlin'."
He draped himself over my shoulder and we went off. Gow didn't look at
us. Bucky sobbed.
"You were right, Jig," he mumbled. "Circus is no good. I know it. But
it's all I got. I love it, Jig. Unnerstan' me? Like Gow there with
Gertrude. She's ugly and no good, but he loves her. I love...."
"Sure, sure," I told him. "Stop crying down my neck."
We were a long way from the light, then. The cages and tanks loomed
high and black over us. It was still. The secret, uneasy motion all
around us and the scruffing of our feet only made it stiller.
Bucky was almost asleep on me. I started to slap him. And then the mist
rose up out of the darkness in little lazy coils, sparkling faintly
with blue, cold fire.
I yelled, "Gow! Gow, the Vapor snakes! Gow—for God's sake!"
I started to run, back along the passageway. Bucky weighed on me, limp
and heavy. The noise burst suddenly in a deafening hell of moans and
roars and shrieks, packed in tight by the metal walls, and above it all
I could hear Gertrude's lonely, whistling scream.
I thought, "
Somebody's down here. Somebody let 'em out. Somebody wants
to kill us!
" I tried to yell again. It strangled in my throat. I
sobbed, and the sweat was thick and cold on me.
One of Bucky's dragging, stumbling feet got between mine. We fell. I
rolled on top of him, covering his face, and buried my own face in the
hollow of his shoulder.
The first snake touched me. It was like a live wire, sliding along the
back of my neck. I screamed. It came down along my cheek, hunting my
mouth. There were more of them, burning me through my clothes.
Bucky moaned and kicked under me. I remember hanging on and thinking,
"This is it. This is it, and oh God, I'm scared!"
Then I went out.
II
Kanza the Martian croaker, was bending over me when I woke up. His
little brown face was crinkled with laughter. He'd lost most of his
teeth, and he gummed
thak
-weed. It smelt.
"You pretty, Mis' Jig," he giggled. "You funny like hell."
He slapped some cold greasy stuff on my face. It hurt. I cursed him and
said, "Where's Shannon? How is he?"
"Mis' Bucky okay. You save life. You big hero, Mis' Jig. Mis' Gow come
nickuhtime get snakes. You hero. Haw! You funny like hell!"
I said, "Yeah," and pushed him away and got up. I almost fell down
a couple of times, but presently I made it to the mirror over the
washstand—I was in my own cell—and I saw what Kanza meant. The damned
snakes had done a good job. I looked like I was upholstered in Scotch
plaid. I felt sick.
Bucky Shannon opened the door. He looked white and grim, and there was
a big burn across his neck. He said:
"Beamish is here with his lawyer."
I picked up my shirt. "Right with you."
Kanza went out, still giggling. Bucky closed the door.
"Jig," he said, "those vapor worms were all right when we went in.
Somebody followed us down and let them out. On purpose."
I hurt all over. I growled, "With that brain, son, you should go far.
Nobody saw anything, of course?" Bucky shook his head.
"Question is, Jig, who wants to kill us, and why?"
"Beamish. He realizes he's been gypped."
"One hundred U.C.'s," said Bucky softly, "for a few lousy swampedge
mining camps. It stinks, Jig. You think we should back out?"
I shrugged. "You're the boss man. I'm only the guy that beats off the
creditors."
"Yeah," Bucky said reflectively. "And I hear starvation isn't a
comfortable death. Okay, Jig. Let's go sign." He put his hand on the
latch and looked at my feet. "And—uh—Jig, I...."
I said, "Skip it. The next time, just don't trip me up, that's all!"
We had a nasty trip to Venus. Gertrude kept the brute tank on edge,
and Gow, on the rare occasions he came up for air, went around looking
like a disaster hoping to happen. To make it worse, Zurt the Jovian
strong-man got hurt during the take-off, and the Mercurian cave-cat had
kittens.
Nobody would have minded that, only one of 'em had only four legs. It
lived just long enough to scare that bunch of superstitious dopes out
of their pants. Circus people are funny that way.
Shannon and I did a little quiet sleuthing, but it was a waste of time.
Anybody in the gang might have let those electric worms out on us. It
didn't help any to know that somebody, maybe the guy next to you at
dinner, was busy thinking ways to kill you. By the time we hit Venus, I
was ready to do a Brodie out the refuse chute.
Shannon set the crate down on the edge of Nahru, the first stop on our
itinerary. I stood beside him, looking out the ports at the scenery. It
was Venus, all right. Blue mud and thick green jungle and rain, and a
bunch of ratty-looking plastic shacks huddling together in the middle
of it. Men in slickers were coming out for a look.
I saw Beamish's sleek yacht parked on a cradle over to the left, and
our router's runabout beside it. Bucky Shannon groaned.
"A blue one, Jig. A morgue if I ever saw one!"
I snarled, "What do you want, with this lousy dog-and-pony show!" and
went out. He followed. The gang was converging on the lock, but they
weren't happy. You get so you can feel those things. The steamy Venus
heat was already sneaking into the ship.
While we passed the hatchway to the brute tank, I could hear Gertrude,
screaming.
The canvasmen were busy setting up the annex, slopping and cursing in
the mud. The paste brigade was heading for the shacks. Shannon and I
stood with the hot rain running off our slickers, looking.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around. Ahra the Nahali woman was
standing in the mud with her arms up and her head thrown back, and her
triangular mouth open like a thirsty dog. She didn't have anything on
but her blue-green, hard scaled hide, and she was chuckling. It didn't
sound nice.
You find a lot of Nahali people in side-shows, doing tricks with
the electric power they carry in their own bodies. They're Venusian
middle-swampers, they're not human, and they never forget it.
Ahra opened her slitted red eyes and looked at me and laughed with
white reptilian teeth.
"Death," she whispered. "Death and trouble. The jungle tells me. I can
smell it in the swamp wind."
The hot rain sluiced over her. She shivered, and the pale skin under
her jaw pulsed like a toad's, and her eyes were red.
"The deep swamps are angry," she whispered. "Something has been taken.
They are angry, and I smell death in the wind!"
She turned away, laughing, and I cursed her, and my stomach was tight
and cold. Bucky said,
"Let's eat if they have a bar in this dump."
We weren't half way across the mud puddle that passed as a landing
field when a man came out of a shack on the edge of the settlement. We
could see him plainly, because he was off to one side of the crowd.
He fell on his knees in the mud, making noises. It took him three or
four tries to get our names out clear enough to understand.
Bucky said, "Jig—it's Sam Kapper."
We started to run. The crowd, mostly big unshaken miners, wheeled
around to see what was happening. People began to close in on the man
who crawled and whimpered in the mud.
Sam Kapper was a hunter, supplying animals to zoos and circuses and
carnivals. He'd given us good deals a couple of times, when we weren't
too broke, and we were pretty friendly.
I hadn't seen him for three seasons. I remembered him as a bronzed,
hard-bitten guy, lean and tough as a twist of tung wire. I felt sick,
looking down at him.
Bucky started to help him up. Kapper was crying, and he jerked all over
like animals I've seen that were scared to death. Some guy leaned over
and put a cigarette in his mouth and lighted it for him.
I was thinking about Kapper, then, and I didn't pay much attention. I
only caught a glimpse of the man's face as he straightened up. I didn't
realize until later that he looked familiar.
We got Kapper inside the shack. It turned out to be a cheap bar, with a
couple of curtained booths at the back. We got him into one and pulled
the curtain in a lot of curious faces. Kapper dragged hard on the
cigarette. The man that gave it to him was gone.
Bucky said gently, "Okay, Sam. Relax. What's the trouble?"
Kapper tried to straighten up. He hadn't shaved. The lean hard lines
of his face had gone slack and his eyes were bloodshot. He was covered
with mud, and his mouth twitched like a sick old man's.
He said thickly, "I found it. I said I'd do it, and I did. I found it
and brought it out."
The cigarette stub fell out of his mouth. He didn't notice it. "Help
me," he said simply. "I'm scared." His mouth drooled.
"I got it hidden. They want to find out, but I won't tell 'em. It's
got to go back. Back where I found it. I tried to take it, but they
wouldn't let me, and I was afraid they'd find it...."
He reached suddenly and grabbed the edge of the table. "I don't know
how they found out about it, but they did. I've got to get it back.
I've got to...."
Bucky looked at me. Kapper was blue around the mouth. I was scared,
suddenly. I said, "Get what back where?"
Bucky got up. "I'll get a doctor," he said. "Stick with him." Kapper
grabbed his wrist. Kapper's nails were blue and the cords in his hands
stood out like guy wires.
"Don't leave me. Got to tell you—where it is. Got to take it back.
Promise you'll take it back." He gasped and struggled over his
breathing.
"Sure," said Bucky. "Sure, well take it back. What is it?"
Kapper's face was horrible. I felt sick, listening to him fight for
air. I wanted to go for a doctor anyway, but somehow I knew it was no
use. Kapper whispered,
"
Cansin
. Male. Only one. You don't know...! Take him back."
"Where is it, Sam?"
I reached across Bucky suddenly and jerked the curtain back. Beamish
was standing there. Beamish, bent over, with his ear cocked. Kapper
made a harsh strangling noise and fell across the table.
Beamish never changed expression. He didn't move while Bucky felt
Kapper's pulse. Bucky didn't need to say anything. We knew.
"Heart?" said Beamish finally.
"Yeah," said Bucky. He looked as bad as I felt. "Poor Sam."
I looked at the cigarette stub smoldering on the table. I looked at
Beamish with his round dead baby face. I climbed over Shannon and
pushed Beamish suddenly down into his lap.
"Keep this guy here till I get back," I said.
Shannon stared at me. Beamish started to get indignant. "Shut up," I
told him. "We got a contract." I yanked the curtains shut and walked
over to the bar.
I began to notice something, then. There were quite a lot of men in the
place. At first glance they looked okay—a hard-faced, muscular bunch
of miners in dirty shirts and high boots.
Then I looked at their hands. They were dirty enough. But they never
did any work in a mine, on Venus or anywhere else.
The place was awfully quiet, for that kind of a place. The bartender
was a big pot-bellied swamp-edger with pale eyes and thick white hair
coiled up on top of his bullet head. He was not happy.
I leaned on the bar. "
Lhak
," I said. He poured it, sullenly, out of a
green bottle. I reached for it, casually.
"That guy we brought in," I said. "He sure has a skinful. Passed out
cold. What's he been spiking his drinks with?"
"
Selak
," said a voice in my ear. "As if you didn't know."
I turned. The man who had given Kapper the cigarette was standing
behind me. And I remembered him, then.
|
Why was the Circus is danger of closing?
|
[
"They lacked impressive skills now that more of their kind had surfaced.",
"They were out of money and out of options.",
"They were no longer able to manage the lot of animals they had acquired.",
"They were too inebriated to be coherent."
] | 1 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why did Billy-boy take Grannie Annie to the grille?
|
[
"He felt he needed to be polite and take her to dinner.",
"No females were allowed in the club",
"He wanted to go somewhere where no one would over hear their conversation",
"He wanted to inspect the book she had been writing."
] | 1 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
What brought Billy-boy to the realization of why Grannie Annie had brought him to the Satellite Theater?
|
[
"The publication of her newest book",
"The appearance of Charles Zanner",
"The attraction of the performance of the Nine Geniuses",
"The spell placed by Doctor Universe"
] | 3 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
What was supposedly destroyed after the crash of the Vennox regime?
|
[
"The Varsoom district",
"Green Flames",
"Ezra Karn, an old prospector",
"Gamma rays"
] | 1 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
How is one able to escape the Varsoom?
|
[
"By laughing",
"By using protection of a Venusian",
"Use of heat rays",
"By throwing Green Flames"
] | 0 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
By what were Grannie Annie and Billy-boy being watched?
|
[
"Ezra Karn, an old prospector",
"Hunter-bird",
"a drone",
"By Venusians"
] | 1 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why was Billy-boy stopped as he was walking into the main lounge?
|
[
"He was not welcome in the club, per recent events.",
"He was no longer a pilot and had to return to the gate.",
"The pilots and crew-men were requested to all meet before entering",
"He was informed that he had a visitor"
] | 3 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Who was performing at the Satellite Theater when Billy-boy and Grannie Annie arrived?
|
[
"The Swamp City community members",
"Charles Zanner",
"Doctor Universe",
"Annabellla C. Flowers"
] | 2 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
How long did Billy-boy and Grannie Annie travel after heat ray attack?
|
[
"Until January, when Death In The Atom hit stands",
"six weeks",
"Until dark when the arrived at the camp fire",
"six days"
] | 3 | true |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why were there no guards present in the ship?
|
[
"They had all been eliminated by the Green Flames",
"the metal envelope was the only guard",
"The ship was well hidden to not need guards",
"The ship was self-operating to defend"
] | 3 | false |
Doctor Universe
By CARL JACOBI
Grannie Annie, who wrote science fiction
under the nom de plume of Annabella C. Flowers,
had stumbled onto a murderous plot more
hair-raising than any she had ever concocted.
And the danger from the villain of the piece
didn't worry her—I was the guy he was shooting at.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Fall 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I was killing an hour in the billiard room of the
Spacemen's Club
in Swamp City when the Venusian bellboy came and tapped me on the
shoulder.
"Beg pardon, thir," he said with his racial lisp, "thereth thome one to
thee you in the main lounge." His eyes rolled as he added, "A lady!"
A woman here...! The
Spacemen's
was a sanctuary, a rest club where
in-coming pilots and crewmen could relax before leaving for another
voyage. The rule that no females could pass its portals was strictly
enforced.
I followed the bellhop down the long corridor that led to the main
lounge. At the threshold I jerked to a halt and stared incredulously.
Grannie Annie!
There she stood before a frantically gesticulating desk clerk, leaning
on her faded green umbrella. A little wisp of a woman clad in a
voluminous black dress with one of those doily-like caps on her head,
tied by a ribbon under her chin. Her high-topped button shoes were
planted firmly on the varpla carpet and her wrinkled face was set in
calm defiance.
I barged across the lounge and seized her hand. "Grannie Annie! I
haven't seen you in two years."
"Hi, Billy-boy," she greeted calmly. "Will you please tell this
fish-face to shut up."
The desk clerk went white. "Mithter Trenwith, if thith lady ith a
friend of yourth, you'll have to take her away. It'th abtholutely
againth the ruleth...."
"Okay, okay," I grinned. "Look, we'll go into the grille. There's no
one there at this hour."
In the grille an equally astonished waiter served us—me a lime rickey
and Grannie Annie her usual whisky sour—I waited until she had tossed
the drink off at a gulp before I set off a chain of questions:
"What the devil are you doing on Venus? Don't you know women aren't
allowed in the
Spacemen's
? What happened to the book you were
writing?"
"Hold it, Billy-boy." Laughingly she threw up both hands. "Sure, I knew
this place had some antiquated laws. Pure fiddle-faddle, that's what
they are. Anyway, I've been thrown out of better places."
She hadn't changed. To her publishers and her readers she might be
Annabella C. Flowers, author of a long list of science fiction novels.
But to me she was still Grannie Annie, as old-fashioned as last year's
hat, as modern as an atomic motor. She had probably written more drivel
in the name of science fiction than anyone alive.
But the public loved it. They ate up her stories, and they clamored for
more. Her annual income totaled into six figures, and her publishers
sat back and massaged their digits, watching their earnings mount.
One thing you had to admit about her books. They may have been dime
novels, but they weren't synthetic. If Annabella C. Flowers wrote a
novel, and the locale was the desert of Mars, she packed her carpet bag
and hopped a liner for Craterville. If she cooked up a feud between two
expeditions on Callisto, she went to Callisto.
She was the most completely delightful crackpot I had ever known.
"What happened to
Guns for Ganymede
?" I asked. "That was the title of
your last, wasn't it?"
Grannie spilled a few shreds of Martian tobacco onto a paper and deftly
rolled herself a cigarette.
"It wasn't
Guns
, it was
Pistols
; and it wasn't
Ganymede
, it was
Pluto
."
I grinned. "All complete, I'll bet, with threats against the universe
and beautiful Earth heroines dragged in by the hair."
"What else is there in science fiction?" she demanded. "You can't have
your hero fall in love with a bug-eyed monster."
Up on the wall a clock chimed the hour. The old woman jerked to her
feet.
"I almost forgot, Billy-boy. I'm due at the
Satellite
Theater in ten
minutes. Come on, you're going with me."
Before I realized it, I was following her through the lounge and out to
the jetty front. Grannie Annie hailed a hydrocar. Five minutes later we
drew up before the big doors of the
Satellite
.
They don't go in for style in Swamp City. A theater to the grizzled
colonials on this side of the planet meant a shack on stilts over the
muck,
zilcon
wood seats and dingy atobide lamps. But the place was
packed with miners, freight-crew-men—all the tide and wash of humanity
that made Swamp City the frontier post it is.
In front was a big sign. It read:
ONE NIGHT ONLY
DOCTOR UNIVERSE AND HIS
NINE GENIUSES
THE QUESTION PROGRAM OF
THE SYSTEM
As we strode down the aisle a mangy-looking Venusian began to pound a
tinpan piano in the pit. Grannie Annie pushed me into a seat in the
front row.
"Sit here," she said. "I'm sorry about all this rush, but I'm one of
the players in this shindig. As soon as the show is over, we'll go
somewhere and talk." She minced lightly down the aisle, climbed the
stage steps and disappeared in the wings.
"That damned fossilized dynamo," I muttered. "She'll be the death of me
yet."
The piano struck a chord in G, and the curtain went rattling up. On the
stage four Earthmen, two Martians, two Venusians, and one Mercurian
sat on an upraised dais. That is to say, eight of them sat. The
Mercurian, a huge lump of granite-like flesh, sprawled there, palpably
uncomfortable. On the right were nine visi sets, each with its new
improved pantascope panel and switchboard. Before each set stood an
Earthman operator.
A tall man, clad in a claw-hammer coat, came out from the wings and
advanced to the footlights.
"People of Swamp City," he said, bowing, "permit me to introduce
myself. I am Doctor Universe, and these are my nine experts."
There was a roar of applause from the
Satellite
audience. When it had
subsided, the man continued:
"As most of you are familiar with our program, it will be unnecessary
to give any advance explanation. I will only say that on this stage are
nine visi sets, each tuned to one of the nine planets. At transmitting
sets all over these planets listeners will appear and voice questions.
These questions, my nine experts will endeavor to answer. For every
question missed, the sender will receive a check for one thousand
planetoles
.
"One thing more. As usual we have with us a guest star who will match
her wits with the experts. May I present that renowned writer of
science fiction, Annabella C. Flowers."
From the left wing Grannie Annie appeared. She bowed and took her place
on the dais.
The Doctor's program began. The operator of the Earth visi twisted his
dials and nodded. Blue light flickered on the pantascope panel to
coalesce slowly into the face of a red-haired man. Sharp and dear his
voice echoed through the theater:
"
Who was the first Earthman to titter the sunward side of Mercury?
"
Doctor Universe nodded and turned to Grannie Annie who had raised her
hand. She said quietly:
"Charles Zanner in the year 2012. In a specially constructed
tracto-car."
And so it went. Questions from Mars, from Earth, from Saturn flowed in
the visi sets. Isolated miners on Jupiter, dancers in swank Plutonian
cafes strove to stump the experts. With Doctor Universe offering
bantering side play, the experts gave their answers. When they failed,
or when the Truthicator flashed a red light, he announced the name of
the winner.
It grew a little tiresome after a while and I wondered why Grannie had
brought me here. And then I began to notice things.
The audience in the
Satellite
seemed to have lost much of its
original fervor. They applauded as before but they did so only at the
signal of Doctor Universe. The spell created by the man was complete.
Pompous and erect, he strode back and forth across the stage like a
general surveying his army. His black eyes gleamed, and his thin lips
were turned in a smile of satisfaction.
When the last question had been answered I joined the exit-moving
crowd. It was outside under the street marquee that a strange incident
occurred.
A yellow-faced Kagor from the upper Martian desert country shuffled by,
dragging his cumbersome third leg behind him. Kagors, of course, had an
unpleasant history of persecution since the early colonization days of
the Red Planet. But the thing that happened there was a throw back to
an earlier era.
Someone shouted, "Yah, yellow-face! Down with all Kagors!" As one
man the crowd took up the cry and surged forward. The helpless Kagor
was seized and flung to the pavement. A knife appeared from nowhere,
snipped the Martian's single lock of hair. A booted foot bludgeoned
into his mouth.
Moments later an official hydrocar roared up and a dozen I.P. men
rushed out and scattered the crowd. But a few stragglers lingered to
shout derisive epithets.
Grannie Annie came out from behind the box office then. She took my arm
and led me around a corner and through a doorway under a sign that read
THE JET. Inside was a deep room with booths along one wall. The place
was all but deserted.
In a booth well toward the rear the old lady surveyed me with sober
eyes.
"Billy-boy, did you see the way that crowd acted?"
I nodded. "As disgraceful an exhibition as I've ever seen. The I.P. men
ought to clamp down."
"The I.P. men aren't strong enough."
She said it quietly, but there was a glitter in her eyes and a harsh
line about her usually smiling lips.
"What do you mean?"
For a moment the old lady sat there in silence; then she leaned back,
closed her eyes, and I knew there was a story coming.
"My last book,
Death In The Atom
, hit the stands last January,"
she began. "When it was finished I had planned to take a six months'
vacation, but those fool publishers of mine insisted I do a sequel.
Well, I'd used Mars and Pluto and Ganymede as settings for novels, so
for this one I decided on Venus. I went to Venus City, and I spent six
weeks in-country. I got some swell background material, and I met Ezra
Karn...."
"Who?" I interrupted.
"An old prospector who lives out in the deep marsh on the outskirts of
Varsoom country. To make a long story short, I got him talking about
his adventures, and he told me plenty."
The old woman paused. "Did you ever hear of the Green Flames?" she
asked abruptly.
I shook my head. "Some new kind of ..."
"It's not a new kind of anything. The Green Flame is a radio-active
rock once found on Mercury. The
Alpha
rays of this rock are similar
to radium in that they consist of streams of material particles
projected at high speed. But the character of the
Gamma
rays has
never been completely analyzed. Like those set up by radium, they are
electromagnetic pulsations, but they are also a strange combination of
Beta
or cathode rays with negatively charged electrons.
"When any form of life is exposed to these
Gamma
rays from the Green
Flame rock, they produce in the creature's brain a certain lassitude
and lack of energy. As the period of exposure increases, this condition
develops into a sense of impotence and a desire for leadership or
guidance. Occasionally, as with the weak-willed, there is a spirit of
intolerance. The Green Flames might be said to be an inorganic opiate,
a thousand times more subtle and more powerful than any known drug."
I was sitting up now, hanging on to the woman's every word.
"Now in 2710, as you'd know if you studied your history, the three
planets of Earth, Venus, and Mars were under governmental bondage. The
cruel dictatorship of Vennox I was short-lived, but it lasted long
enough to endanger all civilized life.
"The archives tell us that one of the first acts of the overthrowing
government was to cast out all Green Flames, two of which Vennox had
ordered must be kept in each household. The effect on the people was
immediate. Representative government, individual enterprise, freedom
followed."
Grannie Annie lit a cigarette and flipped the match to the floor.
"To go back to my first trip to Venus. As I said, I met Ezra Karn, an
old prospector there in the marsh. Karn told me that on one of his
travels into the Varsoom district he had come upon the wreckage of
an old space ship. The hold of that space ship was packed with Green
Flames!"
If Grannie expected me to show surprise at that, she was disappointed.
I said, "So what?"
"So everything, Billy-boy. Do you realize what such a thing would mean
if it were true? Green Flames were supposedly destroyed on all planets
after the Vennox regime crashed. If a quantity of the rock were in
existence, and it fell into the wrong hands, there'd be trouble.
"Of course, I regarded Karn's story as a wild dream, but it made
corking good story material. I wrote it into a novel, and a week after
it was completed, the manuscript was stolen from my study back on
Earth."
"I see," I said as she lapsed into silence. "And now you've come to the
conclusion that the details of your story were true and that someone is
attempting to put your plot into action."
Grannie nodded. "Yes," she said. "That's exactly what I think."
I got my pipe out of my pocket, tamped Martian tobacco into the bowl
and laughed heartily. "The same old Flowers," I said. "Tell me, who's
your thief ... Doctor Universe?"
She regarded me evenly. "What makes you say that?"
I shrugged.
"The way the theater crowd acted. It all ties in."
The old woman shook her head. "No, this is a lot bigger than a simple
quiz program. The theater crowd was but a cross-section of what is
happening all over the System. There have been riots on Earth and Mars,
police officials murdered on Pluto and a demand that government by
representation be abolished on Jupiter. The time is ripe for a military
dictator to step in.
"And you can lay it all to the Green Flames. It seems incredible that a
single shipload of the ore could effect such a wide ranged area, but in
my opinion someone has found a means of making that quantity a thousand
times more potent and is transmiting it
en masse
."
If it had been anyone but Grannie Annie there before me, I would
have called her a fool. And then all at once I got an odd feeling of
approaching danger.
"Let's get out of here," I said, getting up.
Zinnng-whack!
"All right!"
On the mirror behind the bar a small circle with radiating cracks
appeared. On the booth wall a scant inch above Grannie's head the
fresco seemed to melt away suddenly.
A heat ray!
Grannie Annie leaped to her feet, grasped my arm and raced for the
door. Outside a driverless hydrocar stood with idling motors. The old
woman threw herself into the control seat, yanked me in after her and
threw over the starting stud.
An instant later we were plunging through the dark night.
Six days after leaving Swamp City we reached Level Five, the last
outpost of firm ground. Ahead lay the inner marsh, stretching as far as
the eye could reach. Low islands projected at intervals from the thick
water. Mold balls, two feet across, drifted down from the slate-gray
sky like puffs of cotton.
We had traveled this far by
ganet
, the tough little two headed pack
animal of the Venus hinterland. Any form of plane or rocket would have
had its motor instantly destroyed, of course, by the magnetic force
belt that encircled the planet's equator. Now our drivers changed to
boatmen, and we loaded our supplies into three clumsy
jagua
canoes.
It was around the camp fire that night that Grannie took me into her
confidence for the first time since we had left Swamp City.
"We're heading directly for Varsoom country," she said. "If we find
Ezra Karn so much the better. If we don't, we follow his directions to
the lost space ship. Our job is to find that ore and destroy it. You
see, I'm positive the Green Flames have never been removed from the
ship."
Sleep had never bothered me, yet that night I lay awake for hours
tossing restlessly. The thousand sounds of the blue marsh droned
steadily. And the news broadcast I had heard over the portable visi
just before retiring still lingered in my mind. To a casual observer
that broadcast would have meant little, a slight rebellion here, an
isolated crime there. But viewed from the perspective Grannie had
given me, everything dovetailed. The situation on Jupiter was swiftly
coming to a head. Not only had the people on that planet demanded that
representative government be abolished, but a forum was now being held
to find a leader who might take complete dictatorial control.
Outside a whisper-worm hissed softly. I got up and strode out of my
tent. For some time I stood there, lost in thought. Could I believe
Grannie's incredible story? Or was this another of her fantastic plots
which she had skilfully blended into a novel?
Abruptly I stiffened. The familiar drone of the marsh was gone. In its
place a ringing silence blanketed everything.
And then out in the gloom a darker shadow appeared, moving in
undulating sweeps toward the center of the camp. Fascinated, I watched
it advance and retreat, saw two hyalescent eyes swim out of the murk.
It charged, and with but a split second to act, I threw myself flat.
There was a rush of mighty wings as the thing swept over me. Sharp
talons raked my clothing. Again it came, and again I rolled swiftly,
missing the thing by the narrowest of margins.
From the tent opposite a gaunt figure clad in a familiar dress
appeared. Grannie gave a single warning:
"Stand still!"
The thing in the darkness turned like a cam on a rod and drove at us
again. This time the old woman's heat gun clicked, and a tracery of
purple flame shot outward. A horrible soul-chilling scream rent the
air. A moment later something huge and heavy scrabbled across the
ground and shot aloft.
Grannie Annie fired with deliberate speed.
I stood frozen as the diminuendo of its wild cries echoed back to me.
"In heaven's name, what was it?"
"Hunter-bird," Grannie said calmly. "A form of avian life found here
in the swamp. Harmless in its wild state, but when captured, it can be
trained to pursue a quarry until it kills. It has a single unit brain
and follows with a relentless purpose."
"Then that would mean...?"
"That it was sent by our enemy, the same enemy that shot at us in the
cafe in Swamp City. Exactly." Grannie Annie halted at the door of her
tent and faced me with earnest eyes. "Billy-boy, our every move is
being watched. From now on it's the survival of the fittest."
The following day was our seventh in the swamp. The water here
resembled a vast mosaic, striped and cross-striped with long winding
ribbons of yellowish substance that floated a few inches below the
surface. The mold balls coming into contact with the evonium water of
the swamp had undergone a chemical change and evolved into a cohesive
multi-celled marine life that lived and died within a space of hours.
The Venusians paddled with extreme care. Had one of them dipped his
hand into one of those yellow streaks, he would have been devoured in
a matter of seconds.
At high noon by my Earth watch I sighted a low white structure on one
of the distant islands. Moments later we made a landing at a rude
jetty, and Grannie Annie was introducing me to Ezra Karn.
He was not as old a man as I had expected, but he was ragged and
unkempt with iron gray hair falling almost to his shoulders. He was
dressed in
varpa
cloth, the Venus equivalent of buckskin, and on his
head was an enormous flop-brimmed hat.
"Glad to meet you," he said, shaking my hand. "Any friend of Miss
Flowers is a friend of mine." He ushered us down the catwalk into his
hut.
The place was a two room affair, small but comfortable. The latest
type of visi set in one corner showed that Karn was not isolated from
civilization entirely.
Grannie Annie came to the point abruptly. When she had explained the
object of our trip, the prospector became thoughtful.
"Green Flames, eh?" he repeated slowly. "Well yes, I suppose I could
find that space ship again. That is, if I wanted to."
"What do you mean?" Grannie paused in the act of rolling herself a
cigarette. "You know where it is, don't you?"
"Ye-s," Karn nodded. "But like I told you before, that ship lies in
Varsoom country, and that isn't exactly a summer vacation spot."
"What are the Varsoom?" I asked. "A native tribe?"
Karn shook his head. "They're a form of life that's never been seen by
Earthmen. Strictly speaking, they're no more than a form of energy."
"Dangerous?"
"Yes and no. Only man I ever heard of who escaped their country outside
of myself was the explorer, Darthier, three years ago. I got away
because I was alone, and they didn't notice me, and Darthier escaped
because he made 'em laugh."
"Laugh?" A scowl crossed Grannie's face.
"That's right," Karn said. "The Varsoom have a strange nervous reaction
that's manifested by laughing. But just what it is that makes them
laugh, I don't know."
Food supplies and fresh drinking water were replenished at the hut.
Several mold guns were borrowed from the prospector's supply to arm the
Venusians. And then as we were about to leave, Karn suddenly turned.
"The Doctor Universe program," he said. "I ain't missed one in months.
You gotta wait 'til I hear it."
Grannie frowned in annoyance, but the prospector was adamant. He
flipped a stud, twisted a dial and a moment later was leaning back in a
chair, listening with avid interest.
It was the same show I had witnessed back in Swamp City. Once again I
heard questions filter in from the far outposts of the System. Once
again I saw the commanding figure of the quiz master as he strode back
and forth across the stage. And as I sat there, looking into the visi
screen, a curious numbing drowsiness seemed to steal over me and lead
my thoughts far away.
Half an hour later we headed into the unknown. The Venusian boatmen
were ill-at-ease now and jabbered among themselves constantly. We
camped that night on a miserable little island where insects swarmed
about us in hordes. The next day an indefinable wave of weariness and
despondency beset our entire party. I caught myself musing over the
futility of the venture. Only the pleadings of Grannie Annie kept me
from turning back. On the morrow I realized the truth in her warning,
that all of us had been exposed to the insidious radiations.
After that I lost track of time. Day after day of incessant rain ... of
steaming swamp.... But at length we reached firm ground and began our
advance on foot.
It was Karn who first sighted the ship. Striding in the lead, he
suddenly halted at the top of a hill and leveled his arm before him.
There it lay, a huge cigar-shaped vessel of blackened
arelium
steel,
half buried in the swamp soil.
"What's that thing on top?" Karn demanded, puzzled.
A rectangular metal envelope had been constructed over the stern
quarters of the ship. Above this structure were three tall masts. And
suspended between them was a network of copper wire studded with white
insulators.
Grannie gazed a long moment through binoculars. "Billy-boy, take three
Venusians and head across the knoll," she ordered. "Ezra and I will
circle in from the west. Fire a gun if you strike trouble."
But we found no trouble. The scene before us lay steeped in silence.
Moments later our two parties converged at the base of the great ship.
A metal ladder extended from the envelope down the side of the vessel.
Mid-way we could see a circular hatch-like door.
"Up we go, Billy-boy." Heat gun in readiness, Grannie Annie began to
climb slowly.
The silence remained absolute. We reached the door and pulled it open.
There was no sign of life.
"Somebody's gone to a lot of trouble here," Ezra Karn observed.
Somebody had. Before us stretched a narrow corridor, flanked on the
left side by a wall of impenetrable stepto glass. The corridor was
bare of furnishings. But beyond the glass, revealed to us in mocking
clarity, was a high panel, studded with dials and gauges. Even as we
looked, we could see liquid pulse in glass tubes, indicator needles
swing slowly to and fro.
Grannie nodded. "Some kind of a broadcasting unit. The Green Flames in
the lower hold are probably exposed to a
tholpane
plate and their
radiations stepped up by an electro-phosicalic process."
Karn raised the butt of his pistol and brought it crashing against the
glass wall. His arm jumped in recoil, but the glass remained intact.
"You'll never do it that way," Grannie said. "Nothing short of an
atomic blast will shatter that wall. It explains why there are no
guards here. The mechanism is entirely self-operating. Let's see if the
Green Flames are more accessible."
In the lower hold disappointment again confronted us. Visible in
the feeble shafts of daylight that filtered through cracks in the
vessel's hull were tiers of rectangular ingots of green iridescent ore.
Suspended by insulators from the ceiling over them was a thick metal
plate.
But between was a barrier. A wall of impenetrable stepto glass.
Grannie stamped her foot. "It's maddening," she said. "Here we are at
the crux of the whole matter, and we're powerless to make a single
move."
|
Why was the Green Flame so sought after?
|
[
"It was capable of shooting rays that would destroy every existance.",
"It was used in warfare and needed to be protected",
"It was too dangerous to be left unattended",
"It was more powerful than any known drug"
] | 3 | false |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
What can be determined as a similarity between Harvey, Joe, and Johnson?
|
[
"They all have a tendency to want the best for one another to a personal fault.",
"They all have a tendency to think they are more advanced than one another",
"They all have a tendency to spend too much time at the bar where Johnson works",
"They all have a tendency to be greedy at any opportunity"
] | 3 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Why did Harvey and Joe have such a large tab and the bar that was ran by Johnson?
|
[
"They were unaware of the cost of the water served by the bartender.",
"They had consumed multiple alcoholic beverages and lost track of how much they had ordered.",
"Their funds were unlimited and they ordered rounds of drinks for everyone in the bar, including Genius, who had more hands to hold more drinks.",
"Johnson had over-priced the alcoholic drinks they ordered once he knew they were drunk."
] | 0 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Despite the menu prices for the restaurant food being remarkably low, how were Harvey and Joe met with an outrageous bill of 328 buckos?
|
[
"They were charged for an insane amount of overhead.",
"They were charged for services and entertainment.",
"They didn't notice the additional zeros added on to the prices of the menu items",
"They were not informed of the tax charged onto the meal."
] | 1 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Why did Harvey agree to pay the absurd price for the water that he and Joe consumed at the bar?
|
[
"The sheriff had threated them with his holstered weapon.",
"He knew they would be able to con Johnson right back.",
"They were thirsty and too delirious to argue",
"He didn't want to risk being arrested and trapped on Planetoid 42"
] | 1 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
How was Johnson convinced to buy the case astroid fever medication?
|
[
"Proven statistics showing that it was the best antidote",
"Joe's acting skills",
"He felt feverish and thought he may have contracted the illness",
"A price too good that could not be turned down"
] | 1 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
What was so unique about Genius that made Joe and Harvey want to purchase him?
|
[
"His impressive cooking",
"His ability to haggle",
"His useful mechanical skills",
"His 6 arms"
] | 3 | true |
GRIFTERS' ASTEROID
By H. L. GOLD
Harvey and Joe were the slickest con-men ever
to gyp a space-lane sucker. Or so they thought!
Angus Johnson knew differently. He charged them
five buckos for a glass of water—and got it!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories May 1943.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Characteristically, Harvey Ellsworth tried to maintain his dignity,
though his parched tongue was almost hanging out. But Joe Mallon, with
no dignity to maintain, lurched across the rubbish-strewn patch of land
that had been termed a spaceport. When Harvey staggered pontifically
into the battered metalloy saloon—the only one on Planetoid 42—his
tall, gangling partner was already stumbling out, mouthing something
incoherent. They met in the doorway, violently.
"We're delirious!" Joe cried. "It's a mirage!"
"What is?" asked Harvey through a mouthful of cotton.
Joe reeled aside, and Harvey saw what had upset his partner. He stared,
speechless for once.
In their hectic voyages from planet to planet, the pair of panacea
purveyors had encountered the usual strange life-forms. But never had
they seen anything like the amazing creature in that colonial saloon.
Paying no attention to them, it was carrying a case of liquor in two
hands, six siphons in two others, and a broom and dustpan in the
remaining pair. The bartender, a big man resembling the plumpish
Harvey in build, was leaning negligently on the counter, ordering this
impossible being to fill the partly-emptied bottles, squeeze fruit
juice and sweep the floor, all of which the native did simultaneously.
"Nonsense," Harvey croaked uncertainly. "We have seen enough queer
things to know there are always more."
He led the way inside. Through thirst-cracked lips he rasped:
"Water—quick!"
Without a word, the bartender reached under the counter, brought out
two glasses of water. The interplanetary con-men drank noisily, asked
for more, until they had drunk eight glasses. Meanwhile, the bartender
had taken out eight jiggers and filled them with whiskey.
Harvey and Joe were breathing hard from having gulped the water so
fast, but they were beginning to revive. They noticed the bartender's
impersonal eyes studying them shrewdly.
"Strangers, eh?" he asked at last.
"Solar salesmen, my colonial friend," Harvey answered in his usual
lush manner. "We purvey that renowned Martian remedy,
La-anago
Yergis
, the formula for which was recently discovered by ourselves in
the ancient ruined city of La-anago. Medical science is unanimous in
proclaiming this magic medicine the sole panacea in the entire history
of therapeutics."
"Yeah?" said the bartender disinterestedly, polishing the chaser
glasses without washing them. "Where you heading?"
"Out of Mars for Ganymede. Our condenser broke down, and we've gone
without water for five ghastly days."
"Got a mechanic around this dumping ground you call a port?" Joe asked.
"We did. He came near starving and moved on to Titan. Ships don't land
here unless they're in trouble."
"Then where's the water lead-in? We'll fill up and push off."
"Mayor takes care of that," replied the saloon owner. "If you gents're
finished at the bar, your drinks'll be forty buckos."
Harvey grinned puzzledly. "We didn't take any whiskey."
"Might as well. Water's five buckos a glass. Liquor's free with every
chaser."
Harvey's eyes bulged. Joe gulped. "That—that's robbery!" the lanky man
managed to get out in a thin quaver.
The barkeeper shrugged. "When there ain't many customers, you gotta
make more on each one. Besides—"
"Besides nothing!" Joe roared, finding his voice again. "You dirty
crook—robbing poor spacemen! You—"
"You dirty crook!" Joe roared. "Robbing honest spacemen!"
Harvey nudged him warningly. "Easy, my boy, easy." He turned to the
bartender apologetically. "Don't mind my friend. His adrenal glands are
sometimes overactive. You were going to say—?"
The round face of the barkeeper had assumed an aggrieved expression.
"Folks are always thinkin' the other feller's out to do 'em," he said,
shaking his head. "Lemme explain about the water here. It's bitter
as some kinds of sin before it's purified. Have to bring it in with
buckets and make it sweet. That takes time and labor. Waddya think—I
was chargin' feller critters for water just out of devilment? I charge
because I gotta."
"Friend," said Harvey, taking out a wallet and counting off eight
five-bucko bills, "here is your money. What's fair is fair, and you
have put a different complexion on what seemed at first to be an
unconscionable interjection of a middleman between Nature and man's
thirst."
The saloon man removed his dirty apron and came around the bar.
"If that's an apology, I accept it. Now the mayor'll discuss filling
your tanks. That's me. I'm also justice of the peace, official
recorder, fire chief...."
"And chief of police, no doubt," said Harvey jocosely.
"Nope. That's my son, Jed. Angus Johnson's my name. Folks here just
call me Chief. I run this town, and run it right. How much water will
you need?"
Joe estimated quickly. "About seventy-five liters, if we go on half
rations," he answered. He waited apprehensively.
"Let's say ten buckos a liter," the mayor said. "On account of the
quantity, I'm able to quote a bargain price. Shucks, boys, it hurts me
more to charge for water than it does for you to pay. I just got to,
that's all."
The mayor gestured to the native, who shuffled out to the tanks with
them. The planetoid man worked the pump while the mayor intently
watched the crude level-gauge, crying "Stop!" when it registered the
proper amount. Then Johnson rubbed his thumb on his index finger and
wetted his lips expectantly.
Harvey bravely counted off the bills. He asked: "But what are we to
do about replenishing our battery fluid? Ten buckos a liter would be
preposterous. We simply can't afford it."
Johnson's response almost floored them. "Who said anything about
charging you for battery water? You can have all you want for nothing.
It's just the purified stuff that comes so high."
After giving them directions that would take them to the free-water
pool, the ponderous factotum of Planetoid 42 shook hands and headed
back to the saloon. His six-armed assistant followed him inside.
"Now do you see, my hot-tempered colleague?" said Harvey as he and Joe
picked up buckets that hung on the tank. "Johnson, as I saw instantly,
is the victim of a difficult environment, and must charge accordingly."
"Just the same," Joe griped, "paying for water isn't something you can
get used to in ten minutes."
In the fragile forest, they soon came across a stream that sprang from
the igneous soil and splashed into the small pond whose contents,
according to the mayor, was theirs for the asking. They filled their
buckets and hauled them to the ship, then returned for more.
It was on the sixth trip that Joe caught a glimpse of Jupiter-shine on
a bright surface off to the left. The figure, 750, with the bucko sign
in front of it, was still doing acrobatics inside his skull and keeping
a faint suspicion alive in him. So he called Harvey and they went to
investigate.
Among the skimpy ground-crawling vines, they saw a long slender mound
that was unmistakably a buried pipe.
"What's this doing here?" Harvey asked, puzzled. "I thought Johnson had
to transport water in pails."
"Wonder where it leads to," Joe said uneasily.
"It leads
to
the saloon," said Harvey, his eyes rapidly tracing the
pipe back toward the spaceport. "What I am concerned with is where it
leads
from
."
Five minutes later, panting heavily from the unaccustomed exertion of
scrambling through the tangle of planetorial undergrowth, they burst
into the open—before a clear, sparkling pool.
Mutely, Harvey pointed out a pipe-end jutting under the water.
"I am growing suspicious," he said in a rigidly controlled voice.
But Joe was already on his knees, scooping up a handful of water and
tasting it.
"Sweet!" he snarled.
They rushed back to the first pool, where Joe again tasted a sample.
His mouth went wry. "Bitter! He uses only one pool, the sweet one! The
only thing that needs purifying around here is that blasted mayor's
conscience."
"The asteroidal Poobah has tricked us with a slick come-on," said
Harvey slowly. His eyes grew cold. "Joseph, the good-natured artist in
me has become a hard and merciless avenger. I shall not rest until we
have had the best of this colonial con-man! Watch your cues from this
point hence."
Fists clenched, the two returned to the saloon. But at the door they
stopped and their fists unclenched.
"Thought you gents were leaving," the mayor called out, seeing them
frozen in the doorway. "Glad you didn't. Now you can meet my son, Jed.
Him and me are the whole Earthman population of Johnson City."
"You don't need any more," said Harvey, dismayed.
Johnson's eight-foot son, topped by a massive roof of sun-bleached hair
and held up by a foundation that seemed immovable, had obviously been
born and raised in low gravity. For any decent-sized world would have
kept him down near the general dimensions of a man.
He held out an acre of palm. Harvey studied it worriedly, put his own
hand somewhere on it, swallowed as it closed, then breathed again when
his fingers were released in five units instead of a single compressed
one.
"Pleased to meet you," piped a voice that had never known a dense
atmosphere.
The pursuit of vengeance, Harvey realized, had taken a quick and
unpleasant turn. Something shrewd was called for....
"Joseph!" he exclaimed, looking at his partner in alarm. "Don't you
feel well?"
Even before the others could turn to him, Joe's practiced eyes were
gently crossing. He sagged against the door frame, all his features
drooping like a bloodhound's.
"Bring him in here!" Johnson cried. "I mean, get him away! He's coming
down with asteroid fever!"
"Of course," replied Harvey calmly. "Any fool knows the first symptoms
of the disease that once scourged the universe."
"What do you mean,
once
?" demanded Johnson. "I come down with it
every year, and I ain't hankering to have it in an off-season. Get him
out of here!"
"In good time. He can't be moved immediately."
"Then he'll be here for months!"
Harvey helped Joe to the counter and lifted him up on it. The mayor and
his gigantic offspring were cowering across the room, trying to breathe
in tiny, uncontaminating gasps.
"You'll find everything you want in the back room," Johnson said
frantically, "sulfopyridine, mustard plasters, rubs, inhalers, suction
cups—"
"Relics of the past," Harvey stated. "One medication is all modern man
requires to combat the dread menace, asteroid fever."
"What's that?" asked the mayor without conviction.
Instead of replying, Harvey hurried outside to the ungainly second-hand
rocket ship in the center of the shabby spaceport. He returned within a
few minutes, carrying a bottle.
Joe was still stretched out on the bar, panting, his eyes slowly
crossing and uncrossing. Harvey lifted the patient's head tenderly,
put the bottle to his lips and tilted it until he was forced to drink.
When Joe tried to pull away, Harvey was inexorable. He made his partner
drink until most of the liquid was gone. Then he stepped back and
waited for the inevitable result.
Joe's performance was better than ever. He lay supine for several
moments, his face twisted into an expression that seemed doomed
to perpetual wryness. Slowly, however, he sat up and his features
straightened out.
"Are—are you all right?" asked the mayor anxiously.
"Much better," said Joe in a weak voice.
"Maybe you need another dose," Harvey suggested.
Joe recoiled. "I'm fine now!" he cried, and sprang off the bar to prove
it.
Astonished, Johnson and his son drew closer. They searched Joe's face,
and then the mayor timidly felt his pulse.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" Johnson ejaculated.
"
La-anago Yergis
never fails, my friend," Harvey explained. "By
actual test, it conquers asteroid fever in from four to twenty-three
minutes, depending on the severity of the attack. Luckily, we caught
this one before it grew formidable."
The mayor's eyes became clouded mirrors of an inward conflict. "If you
don't charge too much," he said warily, "I might think of buying some."
"We do not sell this unbelievable remedy," Harvey replied with dignity.
"It sells itself."
"'Course, I'd expect a considerable reduction if I bought a whole
case," said Johnson.
"That would be the smallest investment you could make, compared with
the vast loss of time and strength the fever involves."
"How much?" asked the mayor unhappily.
"For you, since you have taken us in so hospitably, a mere five hundred
buckos."
Johnson did not actually stagger back, but he gave the impression of
doing so. "F-four hundred," he offered.
"Not a red cent less than four seventy-five," Harvey said flatly.
"Make it four fifty," quavered Johnson.
"I dislike haggling," said Harvey.
The final price, however, was four hundred and sixty-nine buckos and
fifty redsents. Magnanimously, Harvey added: "And we will include,
gratis
, an elegant bottle-opener, a superb product of Mercurian
handicraftsmanship."
Johnson stabbed out a warning finger. "No tricks now. I want a taste of
that stuff. You're not switching some worthless junk on me."
Harvey took a glass from the bar and poured him a generous sample. The
mayor sniffed it, grimaced, then threw it down his gullet. The ensuing
minute saw a grim battle between a man and his stomach, a battle which
the man gradually won.
"There ain't no words for that taste," he gulped when it was safe to
talk again.
"Medicine," Harvey propounded, "should taste like medicine." To Joe he
said: "Come, my esteemed colleague. We must perform the sacred task to
which we have dedicated ourselves."
With Joe stumbling along behind, he left the saloon, crossed the
clearing and entered the ship. As soon as they were inside, Joe dropped
his murderous silence and cried:
"What kind of a dirty trick was that, giving me poison instead of that
snake oil?"
"That was not poison," Harvey contradicted quietly. "It was
La-anago
Yergis
extract, plus."
"Plus what—arsenic?"
"Now, Joseph! Consider my quandary when I came back here to manufacture
our specific for all known ailments, with the intention of selling
yonder asteroidal tin-horn a bill of medical goods—an entire case,
mind you. Was I to mix the extract with the water for which we had been
swindled to the tune of ten buckos a liter? Where would our profit have
been, then? No; I had to use the bitter free water, of course."
"But why use it on me?" Joe demanded furiously.
Harvey looked reprovingly at his gangling partner. "Did Johnson ask to
taste it, or did he not? One must look ahead, Joseph. I had to produce
the same
medicine
that we will now manufacture. Thus, you were a
guinea pig for a splendid cause."
"Okay, okay," Joe said. "But you shoulda charged him more."
"Joseph, I promise you that we shall get back every redsent of which
that swindler cheated us, besides whatever other funds or valuables he
possesses. We could not be content with less."
"Well, we're starting all right," admitted Joe. "How about that thing
with six arms? He looks like a valuable. Can't we grab him off?"
Harvey stopped filling bottles and looked up pensively.
"I have every hope of luring away the profitable monstrosity.
Apparently you have also surmised the fortune we could make with him.
At first I purpose to exhibit him on our interplanetary tours with our
streamlined panacea; he would be a spectacular attraction for bucolic
suckers. Later, a brief period of demonstrating his abilities on the
audio-visiphone. Then our triumph—we shall sell him at a stupendous
figure to the zoo!"
Joe was still dazed by that monetary vista when he and Harvey carried
the case of medicine to the saloon. The mayor had already cleared a
place of honor in the cluttered back room, where he told them to put it
down carefully. Then he took the elaborate bottle-opener Harvey gave
him, reverently uncorked a bottle and sampled it. It must have been at
least as good as the first; he gagged.
"That's the stuff, all right," he said, swallowing hard. He counted
out the money into Harvey's hand, at a moderate rate that precariously
balanced between his pleasure at getting the fever remedy and his pain
at paying for it. Then he glanced out to see the position of Jupiter,
and asked: "You gents eaten yet? The restaurant's open now."
Harvey and Joe looked at each other. They hadn't been thinking about
food at all, but suddenly they realized that they were hungry.
"It's only water we were short of," Harvey said apprehensively. "We've
got rations back at the ship."
"
H-mph!
" the mayor grunted. "Powdered concentrates. Compressed pap.
Suit yourselves. We treat our stomachs better here. And you're welcome
to our hospitality."
"Your hospitality," said Harvey, "depends on the prices you charge."
"Well, if that's what's worrying you, you can stop worrying," answered
the mayor promptly. "What's more, the kind of dinner I serve here you
can't get anywhere else for any price."
Swiftly, Harvey conned the possibilities of being bilked again. He saw
none.
"Let's take a look at the menu, anyhow, Joe," he said guardedly.
Johnson immediately fell into the role of "mine host."
"Come right in, gents," he invited. "Right into the dining room."
He seated them at a table, which a rope tied between posts made more or
less private, though nobody else was in the saloon and there was little
chance of company.
Genius, the six-armed native, appeared from the dingy kitchen with
two menus in one hand, two glasses of water in another, plus napkins,
silverware, a pitcher, plates, saucers, cups, and their cocktails,
which were on the house. Then he stood by for orders.
Harvey and Joe studied the menu critically. The prices were
phenomenally low. When they glanced up at Johnson in perplexity, he
grinned, bowed and asked: "Everything satisfactory, gents?"
"Quite," said Harvey. "We shall order."
For an hour they were served amazing dishes, both fresh and canned, the
culinary wealth of this planetoid and all the system. And the service
was as extraordinary as the meal itself. With four hands, Genius played
deftly upon a pair of mellow Venusian
viotars
, using his other two
hands for waiting on the table.
"We absolutely must purchase this incredible specimen," Harvey
whispered excitedly when Johnson and the native were both in the
kitchen, attending to the next course. "He would make any society
hostess's season a riotous success, which should be worth a great sum
to women like Mrs. van Schuyler-Morgan, merely for his hire."
"Think of a fast one fast," Joe agreed. "You're right."
"But I dislike having to revise my opinion of a man so often,"
complained Harvey. "I wish Johnson would stay either swindler or honest
merchant. This dinner is worth as least twenty buckos, yet I estimate
our check at a mere bucko twenty redsents."
The mayor's appearance prevented them from continuing the discussion.
"It's been a great honor, gents," he said. "Ain't often I have
visitors, and I like the best, like you two gents."
As if on cue, Genius came out and put the check down between Joe and
Harvey. Harvey picked it up negligently, but his casual air vanished in
a yelp of horror.
"What the devil is this?" he shouted.—"How do you arrive at this
fantastic, idiotic figure—
three hundred and twenty-eight buckos
!"
Johnson didn't answer. Neither did Genius; he simply put on the table,
not a fingerbowl, but a magnifying glass. With one of his thirty
fingers he pointed politely to the bottom of the menu.
Harvey focused on the microscopic print, and his face went pasty with
rage. The minute note read: "Services and entertainment, 327 buckos 80
redsents."
"You can go to hell!" Joe growled. "We won't pay it!"
Johnson sighed ponderously. "I was afraid you'd act like that," he said
with regret. He pulled a tin badge out of his rear pocket, pinned it on
his vest, and twisted his holstered gun into view. "Afraid I'll have to
ask the sheriff to take over."
Johnson, the "sheriff," collected the money, and Johnson, the
"restaurateur," pocketed it. Meanwhile, Harvey tipped Joe the sign to
remain calm.
"My friend," he said to the mayor, and his tones took on a
schoolmasterish severity, "your long absence from Earth has perhaps
made you forget those elements of human wisdom that have entered the
folk-lore of your native planet. Such as, for example: 'It is folly
to kill a goose that lays golden eggs,' and 'Penny wise is pound
foolish.'"
"I don't get the connection," objected Johnson.
"Well, by obliging us to pay such a high price for your dinner, you put
out of your reach the chance of profiting from a really substantial
deal. My partner and I were prepared to make you a sizable offer for
the peculiar creature you call Genius. But by reducing our funds the
way you have—"
"Who said I wanted to sell him?" the mayor interrupted. He rubbed his
fingers together and asked disinterestedly: "What were you going to
offer, anyhow?"
"It doesn't matter any longer," Harvey said with elaborate
carelessness. "Perhaps you wouldn't have accepted it, anyway."
"That's right," Johnson came back emphatically. "But what would your
offer have been which I would have turned down?"
"Which one? The one we were going to make, or the one we can make now?"
"Either one. It don't make no difference. Genius is too valuable to
sell."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Johnson. Don't tell me no amount of money would
tempt you!"
"Nope. But how much did you say?"
"Ah, then you will consider releasing Genius!"
"Well, I'll tell you something," said the mayor confidentially. "When
you've got one thing, you've got one thing. But when you've got money,
it's the same as having a lot of things. Because, if you've got money,
you can buy this and that and this and that and—"
"This and that," concluded Joe. "We'll give you five hundred buckos."
"Now, gents!" Johnson remonstrated. "Why, six hundred would hardly—"
"You haven't left us much money," Harvey put in.
The mayor frowned. "All right, we'll split the difference. Make it
five-fifty."
Harvey was quick to pay out, for this was a genuine windfall. Then he
stood up and admired the astonishing possession he had so inexpensively
acquired.
"I really hate to deprive you of this unique creature," he said to
Johnson. "I should imagine you will be rather lonely, with only your
filial mammoth to keep you company."
"I sure will," Johnson confessed glumly. "I got pretty attached to
Genius, and I'm going to miss him something awful."
Harvey forcibly removed his eyes from the native, who was clearing off
the table almost all at once.
"My friend," he said, "we take your only solace, it is true, but in his
place we can offer something no less amazing and instructive."
The mayor's hand went protectively to his pocket. "What is it?" he
asked with the suspicion of a man who has seen human nature at its
worst and expects nothing better.
"Joseph, get our most prized belonging from the communications room of
the ship," Harvey instructed. To Johnson he explained: "You must see
the wondrous instrument before its value can be appreciated. My partner
will soon have it here for your astonishment."
Joe's face grew as glum as Johnson's had been. "Aw, Harv," he
protested, "do we have to sell it? And right when I thought we were
getting the key!"
"We must not be selfish, my boy," Harvey said nobly. "We have had our
chance; now we must relinquish Fate to the hands of a man who might
have more success than we. Go, Joseph. Bring it here."
Unwillingly, Joe turned and shuffled out.
On a larger and heavier world than Planetoid 42, Johnson's curiosity
would probably have had weight and mass. He was bursting with
questions, but he was obviously afraid they would cost him money. For
his part, Harvey allowed that curiosity to grow like a Venusian amoeba
until Joe came in, lugging a radio.
"Is that what you were talking about?" the mayor snorted. "What makes
you think I want a radio? I came here to get away from singers and
political speech-makers."
"Do not jump to hasty conclusions," Harvey cautioned. "Another word,
and I shall refuse you the greatest opportunity any man has ever had,
with the sole exceptions of Joseph, myself and the unfortunate inventor
of this absolutely awe-inspiring device."
"I ain't in the market for a radio," Johnson said stubbornly.
Harvey nodded in relief. "We have attempted to repay our host, Joseph.
He has spurned our generosity. We have now the chance to continue our
study, which I am positive will soon reward us with the key to an
enormous fortune."
"Well, that's no plating off our bow," Joe grunted. "I'm glad he did
turn it down. I hated to give it up after working on it for three whole
years."
He picked up the radio and began walking toward the door.
"Now, hold on!" the mayor cried. "I ain't
saying
I'll buy, but what
is it I'm turning down?"
Joe returned and set the instrument down on the bar. His face
sorrowful, Harvey fondly stroked the scarred plasticoid cabinet.
"To make a long story, Mr. Johnson," he said, "Joseph and I were among
the chosen few who knew the famous Doctor Dean intimately. Just before
his tragic death, you will recall, Dean allegedly went insane." He
banged his fist on the bar. "I have said it before, and I repeat again,
that was a malicious lie, spread by the doctor's enemies to discredit
his greatest invention—this fourth dimensional radio!"
"This what?" Johnson blurted out.
"In simple terms," clarified Harvey, "the ingenious doctor discovered
that the yawning chasm between the dimensions could be bridged by
energy of all quanta. There has never been any question that the
inhabitants of the super-dimension would be far more civilized than
ourselves. Consequently, the man who could tap their knowledge would
find himself in possession of a powerful, undreamt-of science!"
The mayor looked respectfully at the silent box on the bar.
"And this thing gets broadcasts from the fourth dimension?"
"It does, Mr. Johnson! Only charlatans like those who envied Doctor
Dean's magnificent accomplishments could deny that fact."
The mayor put his hands in his pockets, unswiveled one hip and stared
thoughtfully at the battered cabinet.
"Well, let's say it picks up fourth dimensional broadcasts," he
conceded. "But how could you understand what they're saying? Folks up
there wouldn't talk our language."
Again Harvey smashed his fist down. "Do you dare to repeat the scurvy
lie that broke Dean's spirit and drove him to suicide?"
Johnson recoiled. "No—no,
of course not
. I mean, being up here, I
naturally couldn't get all the details."
"Naturally," Harvey agreed, mollified. "I'm sorry I lost my temper.
But it is a matter of record that the doctor proved the broadcasts
emanating from the super-dimension were in English! Why should that be
so difficult to believe? Is it impossible that at one time there was
communication between the dimensions, that the super-beings admired
our language and adopted it in all its beauty, adding to it their own
hyper-scientific trimmings?"
"Why, I don't know," Johnson said in confusion.
"For three years, Joseph and I lost sleep and hair, trying to detect
the simple key that would translate the somewhat metamorphosed
broadcasts into our primitive English. It eluded us. Even the doctor
failed. But that was understandable; a sensitive soul like his could
stand only so much. And the combination of ridicule and failure to
solve the mystery caused him to take his own life."
Johnson winced. "Is that what you want to unload on me?"
"For a very good reason, sir. Patience is the virtue that will be
rewarded with the key to these fourth dimensional broadcasts. A man who
could devote his life to improving this lonely worldlet is obviously a
person with unusual patience."
"Yeah," the mayor said grudgingly, "I ain't exactly flighty."
"Therefore, you are the man who could unravel the problem!"
Johnson asked skeptically: "How about a sample first?"
|
Despite what they told Johnson, what can be determined as Harvey and Joe's true occupation?
|
[
"Sales men",
"space-side mechanics",
"Traveling gamblers",
"Con artists"
] | 3 | false |
The Monster Maker
By RAY BRADBURY
"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It
was to laugh! For Click and Irish were
marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only
weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get
scared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening
to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a
damned sweet picture of everything that was happening.
The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,
wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the
dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this
meteor coming like blazing fury.
Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's
skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the
rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.
There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was
picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't
long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to
his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had
been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of
the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.
It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids
rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a
tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.
Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the
nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you
ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of
metal death. What a fade-out!
"Irish!" he heard himself say. "Is this IT?"
"Is this
what
?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.
"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?"
Marnagan fumed. "I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm
ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!"
They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of
gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.
The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over
and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled
around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,
air and energy flung out.
Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking
quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach
film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like
this
one! His
brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his
camera.
Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.
Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked
to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold
that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the
wreckage into that silence.
He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his
fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,
thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—"
A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven
feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.
"Hold it!" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera
whirred. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed
from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!"
"From the toe of me boot!" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders
flexed inside his vac-suit. "I might've died in there, and you nursin'
that film-contraption!"
Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. "I never thought of that.
Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always
have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to." Hathaway
stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he
couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,
pale. "Where are we?"
"A million miles from nobody."
They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that
stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.
Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look
sick.
"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking
hands the other side of this rock in two hours." Marnagan shook his mop
of dusty red hair. "And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd
capture that Gunther lad!"
His voice stopped and the silence spoke.
Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. "I checked
my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left."
The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric
rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply
mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or
was
suffocation a better death...?
Sixty minutes.
They stood and looked at one another.
"Damn that meteor!" said Marnagan, hotly.
Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:
"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked
it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.
Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've
got it here, on film."
Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. "It's not proof we need
now, Click. Oxygen. And then
food
. And then some way back to Earth."
Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: "This is Gunther's work. He's
here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.
Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back
to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate
whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins
through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by
yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice."
They started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a
bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't
much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.
Marnagan said, "We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat
with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got
fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll
be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all
you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any
words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about
it. As for me—" he twisted his glossy red face. "Keeping alive is me
hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order."
Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.
It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and
the crash this way."
Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far
down, and the green eyes blazed.
They stopped, together.
"Oops!" Click said.
"Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel
that
?"
Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and
limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"
They ran back. "Let's try it again."
They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.
"Gravity should not act this way, Click."
"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No
wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!
Gunther'd do anything to—did I say
anything
?"
Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand
came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable
horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with
numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some
tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along
in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.
Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke
cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed
after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in
Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt
the creatures at all.
"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline
toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"
Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're
too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out,
as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.
Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a
scene!"
"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"
"Use your gun."
"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,
eh, Click?"
"Yeah. Sure.
You
enjoyed it, every moment of it."
"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what
will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"
"Let me think—"
"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."
They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt
funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters
and Gunther and—
"Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a
blue one?"
Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,
now you've got
me
doing it. Joking in the face of death."
"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."
That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed
out.
Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but
sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take
me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."
Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All
this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."
"Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while
waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our
rescue!"
Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."
Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he
said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,
my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace
negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."
Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver
for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running
around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but
his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of
Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.
Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling
for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without
much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death
wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying
anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they
had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.
When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it
up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:
"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt
back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,
what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space
war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory
is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which
dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?
Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.
It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes
unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."
Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"
"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at
the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from
wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals
tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle
his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the
Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,
then."
"I don't see no Base around."
Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and
a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped
it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it
developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing
film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,
leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the
impressions. Quick stuff.
Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,
Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."
Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah,
Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."
"Huh?"
"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid
monsters complete."
"What!"
Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:
Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally
with
nothing
; Marnagan shooting his gun at
nothing
; Marnagan
pretending to be happy in front of
nothing
.
Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!
The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair
like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.
Maybe—
Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this
mess! Here—"
He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,
the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the
monsters weren't there, they weren't there.
"Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"
"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.
Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or
infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"
"Nuts! Any color
we
see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."
"Hey, where
you
going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man
tried pushing past him.
"Get out of the way," said Hathaway.
Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere,
it'll be me does the going."
"I can't let you do that, Irish."
"Why not?"
"You'd be going on my say-so."
"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?"
"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—"
"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand
aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their
bones." He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist
except under an inch of porous metal plate. "Your express purpose on
this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later
for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand
education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me
profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The
Lion's Den."
"Irish, I—"
"Shut up and load up."
Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.
"Ready, Click?"
"I—I guess so," said Hathaway. "And remember, think it hard, Irish.
Think it hard. There aren't any animals—"
"Keep me in focus, lad."
"All the way, Irish."
"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!"
Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,
two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were
waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.
Right out into the middle of them....
That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the
monsters!
Only now it was only Marnagan.
No more monsters.
Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. "Hey, Click, look
at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and
ran away!"
"Ran, hell!" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and
animated. "They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative
figments!"
"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you
coward!"
"Smile when you say that, Irish."
"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in
your sweet grey eyes?"
"Damn," swore the photographer, embarrassedly. "Why don't they put
window-wipers in these helmets?"
"I'll take it up with the Board, lad."
"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one
hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part
of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back
into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing
suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals
kill them."
"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill."
"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could
have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If
that isn't being dangerous—"
The Irishman whistled.
"But, we've got to
move
, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.
In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,
Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters." Click
attached his camera to his mid-belt. "Gunther probably thinks we're
dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never
had a chance to disbelieve them."
"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—"
"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—" Click
stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and
felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady
himself, and swayed. "I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.
This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick."
Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. "Hold tight, Click. The
guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach."
"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals
came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come
back!"
"Come back? How?"
"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we
believe in them again, they'll return."
Marnagan didn't like it. "Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if
we believe in 'em?"
Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. "Not if we believe
in them to a
certain point
. Psychologically they can both be seen and
felt. We only want to
see
them coming at us again."
"
Do
we, now?"
"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—"
"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?"
Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. "Just think—I will see
the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.
Think it over and over."
Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. "And—what if I forget to remember
all that? What if I get excited...?"
Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at
Irish.
Marnagan cursed. "All right, lad. Let's have at it!"
The monsters returned.
A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming
in malevolent anticipation about the two men.
"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a
sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!"
Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted
faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.
Marnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and
raised his gun and made quick moves with it. "Click! This one here!
It's real!" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense
frame slammed against rock, noiselessly.
Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the
helmet glass with his hands, shouting:
"Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into
your mind! It's not real, I tell you!"
"Click—" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.
"Click—" He was fighting hard. "I—I—sure now. Sure—" He smiled.
"It—it's only a shanty fake!"
"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up."
Marnagan's thick lips opened. "It's only a fake," he said. And then,
irritated, "Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!"
Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and
little bubbles danced in his eyes. "Irish,
you
forget the monsters.
Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might
forget."
Marnagan showed his teeth. "Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And
besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty."
The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.
Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.
"We'll be taking our chances on guard," hissed Irish. "I'll go ahead,
draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,
you
show up with
your
gun...."
"I haven't got one."
"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They
probably got scanners out. Let them see me—"
And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about
five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved
up, and there was a door opening in the rock.
His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. "A
door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!"
Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the
thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.
Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.
"All right, put 'em up!" a new harsh voice cried over a different
radio. One of Gunther's guards.
Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.
The strange harsh voice said, "That's better. Don't try and pick that
gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.
How'd you get past the animals?"
Click started running. He switched off his
sending
audio, kept his
receiving
on. Marnagan, weaponless.
One
guard. Click gasped. Things
were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running
and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:
"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles
and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!" Marnagan said. "But, damn you,
they killed my partner before he had a chance!"
The guard laughed.
The air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head
swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He
let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't
have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!
A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that
yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,
air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a
proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard
had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: "I think I'll let
you stand right there and die," he said quietly. "That what Gunther
wanted, anway. A nice sordid death."
Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.
"Don't move!" he snapped. "I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One
twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind
you! Freeze!"
The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped
his gun to the floor.
"Get his gun, Irish."
Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.
Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. "Thanks for
posing," he said. "That shot will go down in film history for candid
acting."
"What!"
"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door
leading into the Base?"
The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.
Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.
"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double
time! Double!"
Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on
their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,
hid him in a huge trash receptacle. "Where he belongs," observed Irish
tersely.
They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing
more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.
Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was
short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to
rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for
cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the
swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't
wanted. They were scared off.
The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of
intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film
with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them
into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.
"So here we are, still not much better off than we were," growled
Irish. "We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn
up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the
monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?"
"What good would that do?" Hathaway gnawed his lip. "They wouldn't fool
the engineers who created them, you nut."
Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. "Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come
riding over the hill—"
"Irish!" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. "Irish. The U.S.
Cavalry it is!" His eyes darted over the machines. "Here. Help me.
We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century."
Marnagan winced. "You breathing oxygen or whiskey?"
"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
"That's a silly question."
"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
"Impossible!"
"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
The Patrol was coming!
Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
|
Which best describes the relationship between the protagonists?
|
[
"They're friendly but their friendship detracts from their ability to problem-solve and be productive.",
"They're both in a tough situation but their hatred for one another pushes them to work independently.",
"They work together and are able to coordinate with each other pretty well.",
"They don't like each other too much; they put up with each other at best."
] | 2 | true |
The Monster Maker
By RAY BRADBURY
"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It
was to laugh! For Click and Irish were
marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only
weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get
scared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening
to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a
damned sweet picture of everything that was happening.
The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,
wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the
dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this
meteor coming like blazing fury.
Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's
skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the
rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.
There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was
picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't
long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to
his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had
been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of
the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.
It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids
rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a
tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.
Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the
nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you
ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of
metal death. What a fade-out!
"Irish!" he heard himself say. "Is this IT?"
"Is this
what
?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.
"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?"
Marnagan fumed. "I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm
ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!"
They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of
gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.
The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over
and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled
around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,
air and energy flung out.
Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking
quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach
film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like
this
one! His
brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his
camera.
Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.
Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked
to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold
that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the
wreckage into that silence.
He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his
fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,
thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—"
A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven
feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.
"Hold it!" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera
whirred. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed
from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!"
"From the toe of me boot!" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders
flexed inside his vac-suit. "I might've died in there, and you nursin'
that film-contraption!"
Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. "I never thought of that.
Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always
have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to." Hathaway
stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he
couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,
pale. "Where are we?"
"A million miles from nobody."
They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that
stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.
Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look
sick.
"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking
hands the other side of this rock in two hours." Marnagan shook his mop
of dusty red hair. "And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd
capture that Gunther lad!"
His voice stopped and the silence spoke.
Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. "I checked
my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left."
The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric
rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply
mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or
was
suffocation a better death...?
Sixty minutes.
They stood and looked at one another.
"Damn that meteor!" said Marnagan, hotly.
Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:
"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked
it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.
Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've
got it here, on film."
Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. "It's not proof we need
now, Click. Oxygen. And then
food
. And then some way back to Earth."
Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: "This is Gunther's work. He's
here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.
Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back
to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate
whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins
through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by
yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice."
They started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a
bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't
much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.
Marnagan said, "We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat
with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got
fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll
be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all
you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any
words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about
it. As for me—" he twisted his glossy red face. "Keeping alive is me
hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order."
Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.
It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and
the crash this way."
Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far
down, and the green eyes blazed.
They stopped, together.
"Oops!" Click said.
"Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel
that
?"
Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and
limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"
They ran back. "Let's try it again."
They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.
"Gravity should not act this way, Click."
"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No
wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!
Gunther'd do anything to—did I say
anything
?"
Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand
came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable
horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with
numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some
tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along
in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.
Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke
cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed
after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in
Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt
the creatures at all.
"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline
toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"
Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're
too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out,
as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.
Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a
scene!"
"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"
"Use your gun."
"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,
eh, Click?"
"Yeah. Sure.
You
enjoyed it, every moment of it."
"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what
will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"
"Let me think—"
"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."
They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt
funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters
and Gunther and—
"Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a
blue one?"
Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,
now you've got
me
doing it. Joking in the face of death."
"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."
That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed
out.
Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but
sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take
me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."
Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All
this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."
"Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while
waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our
rescue!"
Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."
Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he
said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,
my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace
negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."
Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver
for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running
around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but
his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of
Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.
Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling
for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without
much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death
wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying
anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they
had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.
When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it
up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:
"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt
back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,
what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space
war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory
is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which
dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?
Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.
It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes
unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."
Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"
"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at
the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from
wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals
tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle
his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the
Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,
then."
"I don't see no Base around."
Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and
a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped
it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it
developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing
film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,
leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the
impressions. Quick stuff.
Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,
Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."
Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah,
Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."
"Huh?"
"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid
monsters complete."
"What!"
Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:
Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally
with
nothing
; Marnagan shooting his gun at
nothing
; Marnagan
pretending to be happy in front of
nothing
.
Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!
The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair
like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.
Maybe—
Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this
mess! Here—"
He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,
the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the
monsters weren't there, they weren't there.
"Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"
"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.
Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or
infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"
"Nuts! Any color
we
see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."
"Hey, where
you
going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man
tried pushing past him.
"Get out of the way," said Hathaway.
Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere,
it'll be me does the going."
"I can't let you do that, Irish."
"Why not?"
"You'd be going on my say-so."
"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?"
"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—"
"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand
aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their
bones." He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist
except under an inch of porous metal plate. "Your express purpose on
this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later
for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand
education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me
profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The
Lion's Den."
"Irish, I—"
"Shut up and load up."
Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.
"Ready, Click?"
"I—I guess so," said Hathaway. "And remember, think it hard, Irish.
Think it hard. There aren't any animals—"
"Keep me in focus, lad."
"All the way, Irish."
"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!"
Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,
two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were
waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.
Right out into the middle of them....
That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the
monsters!
Only now it was only Marnagan.
No more monsters.
Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. "Hey, Click, look
at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and
ran away!"
"Ran, hell!" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and
animated. "They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative
figments!"
"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you
coward!"
"Smile when you say that, Irish."
"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in
your sweet grey eyes?"
"Damn," swore the photographer, embarrassedly. "Why don't they put
window-wipers in these helmets?"
"I'll take it up with the Board, lad."
"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one
hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part
of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back
into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing
suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals
kill them."
"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill."
"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could
have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If
that isn't being dangerous—"
The Irishman whistled.
"But, we've got to
move
, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.
In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,
Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters." Click
attached his camera to his mid-belt. "Gunther probably thinks we're
dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never
had a chance to disbelieve them."
"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—"
"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—" Click
stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and
felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady
himself, and swayed. "I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.
This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick."
Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. "Hold tight, Click. The
guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach."
"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals
came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come
back!"
"Come back? How?"
"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we
believe in them again, they'll return."
Marnagan didn't like it. "Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if
we believe in 'em?"
Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. "Not if we believe
in them to a
certain point
. Psychologically they can both be seen and
felt. We only want to
see
them coming at us again."
"
Do
we, now?"
"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—"
"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?"
Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. "Just think—I will see
the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.
Think it over and over."
Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. "And—what if I forget to remember
all that? What if I get excited...?"
Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at
Irish.
Marnagan cursed. "All right, lad. Let's have at it!"
The monsters returned.
A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming
in malevolent anticipation about the two men.
"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a
sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!"
Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted
faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.
Marnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and
raised his gun and made quick moves with it. "Click! This one here!
It's real!" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense
frame slammed against rock, noiselessly.
Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the
helmet glass with his hands, shouting:
"Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into
your mind! It's not real, I tell you!"
"Click—" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.
"Click—" He was fighting hard. "I—I—sure now. Sure—" He smiled.
"It—it's only a shanty fake!"
"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up."
Marnagan's thick lips opened. "It's only a fake," he said. And then,
irritated, "Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!"
Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and
little bubbles danced in his eyes. "Irish,
you
forget the monsters.
Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might
forget."
Marnagan showed his teeth. "Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And
besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty."
The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.
Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.
"We'll be taking our chances on guard," hissed Irish. "I'll go ahead,
draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,
you
show up with
your
gun...."
"I haven't got one."
"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They
probably got scanners out. Let them see me—"
And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about
five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved
up, and there was a door opening in the rock.
His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. "A
door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!"
Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the
thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.
Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.
"All right, put 'em up!" a new harsh voice cried over a different
radio. One of Gunther's guards.
Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.
The strange harsh voice said, "That's better. Don't try and pick that
gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.
How'd you get past the animals?"
Click started running. He switched off his
sending
audio, kept his
receiving
on. Marnagan, weaponless.
One
guard. Click gasped. Things
were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running
and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:
"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles
and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!" Marnagan said. "But, damn you,
they killed my partner before he had a chance!"
The guard laughed.
The air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head
swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He
let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't
have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!
A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that
yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,
air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a
proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard
had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: "I think I'll let
you stand right there and die," he said quietly. "That what Gunther
wanted, anway. A nice sordid death."
Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.
"Don't move!" he snapped. "I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One
twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind
you! Freeze!"
The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped
his gun to the floor.
"Get his gun, Irish."
Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.
Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. "Thanks for
posing," he said. "That shot will go down in film history for candid
acting."
"What!"
"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door
leading into the Base?"
The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.
Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.
"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double
time! Double!"
Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on
their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,
hid him in a huge trash receptacle. "Where he belongs," observed Irish
tersely.
They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing
more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.
Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was
short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to
rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for
cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the
swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't
wanted. They were scared off.
The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of
intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film
with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them
into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.
"So here we are, still not much better off than we were," growled
Irish. "We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn
up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the
monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?"
"What good would that do?" Hathaway gnawed his lip. "They wouldn't fool
the engineers who created them, you nut."
Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. "Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come
riding over the hill—"
"Irish!" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. "Irish. The U.S.
Cavalry it is!" His eyes darted over the machines. "Here. Help me.
We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century."
Marnagan winced. "You breathing oxygen or whiskey?"
"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
"That's a silly question."
"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
"Impossible!"
"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
The Patrol was coming!
Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
|
What makes the protagonists become less concerned about being trapped by the beasts?
|
[
"They realized that the beasts were not actually interested in hurting them, so they were able to calmly leave their hiding spot.",
"They realized that the beasts were too big to fit into the space they were in, so they could camp out in that spot indefinitely.",
"They realized the beasts were not actual beasts, but were meant to seem real.",
"They realized that the beasts die when their photo is taken, and they had captured many of the beasts on camera."
] | 2 | true |
The Monster Maker
By RAY BRADBURY
"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It
was to laugh! For Click and Irish were
marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only
weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get
scared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening
to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a
damned sweet picture of everything that was happening.
The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,
wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the
dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this
meteor coming like blazing fury.
Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's
skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the
rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.
There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was
picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't
long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to
his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had
been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of
the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.
It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids
rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a
tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.
Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the
nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you
ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of
metal death. What a fade-out!
"Irish!" he heard himself say. "Is this IT?"
"Is this
what
?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.
"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?"
Marnagan fumed. "I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm
ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!"
They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of
gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.
The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over
and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled
around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,
air and energy flung out.
Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking
quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach
film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like
this
one! His
brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his
camera.
Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.
Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked
to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold
that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the
wreckage into that silence.
He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his
fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,
thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—"
A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven
feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.
"Hold it!" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera
whirred. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed
from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!"
"From the toe of me boot!" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders
flexed inside his vac-suit. "I might've died in there, and you nursin'
that film-contraption!"
Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. "I never thought of that.
Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always
have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to." Hathaway
stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he
couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,
pale. "Where are we?"
"A million miles from nobody."
They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that
stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.
Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look
sick.
"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking
hands the other side of this rock in two hours." Marnagan shook his mop
of dusty red hair. "And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd
capture that Gunther lad!"
His voice stopped and the silence spoke.
Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. "I checked
my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left."
The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric
rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply
mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or
was
suffocation a better death...?
Sixty minutes.
They stood and looked at one another.
"Damn that meteor!" said Marnagan, hotly.
Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:
"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked
it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.
Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've
got it here, on film."
Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. "It's not proof we need
now, Click. Oxygen. And then
food
. And then some way back to Earth."
Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: "This is Gunther's work. He's
here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.
Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back
to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate
whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins
through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by
yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice."
They started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a
bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't
much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.
Marnagan said, "We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat
with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got
fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll
be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all
you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any
words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about
it. As for me—" he twisted his glossy red face. "Keeping alive is me
hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order."
Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.
It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and
the crash this way."
Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far
down, and the green eyes blazed.
They stopped, together.
"Oops!" Click said.
"Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel
that
?"
Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and
limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"
They ran back. "Let's try it again."
They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.
"Gravity should not act this way, Click."
"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No
wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!
Gunther'd do anything to—did I say
anything
?"
Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand
came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable
horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with
numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some
tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along
in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.
Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke
cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed
after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in
Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt
the creatures at all.
"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline
toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"
Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're
too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out,
as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.
Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a
scene!"
"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"
"Use your gun."
"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,
eh, Click?"
"Yeah. Sure.
You
enjoyed it, every moment of it."
"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what
will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"
"Let me think—"
"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."
They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt
funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters
and Gunther and—
"Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a
blue one?"
Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,
now you've got
me
doing it. Joking in the face of death."
"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."
That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed
out.
Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but
sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take
me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."
Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All
this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."
"Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while
waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our
rescue!"
Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."
Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he
said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,
my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace
negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."
Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver
for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running
around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but
his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of
Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.
Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling
for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without
much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death
wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying
anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they
had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.
When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it
up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:
"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt
back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,
what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space
war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory
is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which
dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?
Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.
It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes
unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."
Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"
"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at
the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from
wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals
tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle
his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the
Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,
then."
"I don't see no Base around."
Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and
a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped
it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it
developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing
film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,
leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the
impressions. Quick stuff.
Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,
Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."
Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah,
Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."
"Huh?"
"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid
monsters complete."
"What!"
Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:
Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally
with
nothing
; Marnagan shooting his gun at
nothing
; Marnagan
pretending to be happy in front of
nothing
.
Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!
The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair
like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.
Maybe—
Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this
mess! Here—"
He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,
the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the
monsters weren't there, they weren't there.
"Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"
"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.
Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or
infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"
"Nuts! Any color
we
see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."
"Hey, where
you
going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man
tried pushing past him.
"Get out of the way," said Hathaway.
Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere,
it'll be me does the going."
"I can't let you do that, Irish."
"Why not?"
"You'd be going on my say-so."
"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?"
"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—"
"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand
aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their
bones." He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist
except under an inch of porous metal plate. "Your express purpose on
this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later
for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand
education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me
profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The
Lion's Den."
"Irish, I—"
"Shut up and load up."
Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.
"Ready, Click?"
"I—I guess so," said Hathaway. "And remember, think it hard, Irish.
Think it hard. There aren't any animals—"
"Keep me in focus, lad."
"All the way, Irish."
"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!"
Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,
two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were
waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.
Right out into the middle of them....
That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the
monsters!
Only now it was only Marnagan.
No more monsters.
Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. "Hey, Click, look
at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and
ran away!"
"Ran, hell!" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and
animated. "They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative
figments!"
"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you
coward!"
"Smile when you say that, Irish."
"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in
your sweet grey eyes?"
"Damn," swore the photographer, embarrassedly. "Why don't they put
window-wipers in these helmets?"
"I'll take it up with the Board, lad."
"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one
hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part
of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back
into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing
suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals
kill them."
"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill."
"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could
have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If
that isn't being dangerous—"
The Irishman whistled.
"But, we've got to
move
, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.
In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,
Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters." Click
attached his camera to his mid-belt. "Gunther probably thinks we're
dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never
had a chance to disbelieve them."
"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—"
"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—" Click
stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and
felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady
himself, and swayed. "I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.
This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick."
Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. "Hold tight, Click. The
guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach."
"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals
came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come
back!"
"Come back? How?"
"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we
believe in them again, they'll return."
Marnagan didn't like it. "Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if
we believe in 'em?"
Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. "Not if we believe
in them to a
certain point
. Psychologically they can both be seen and
felt. We only want to
see
them coming at us again."
"
Do
we, now?"
"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—"
"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?"
Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. "Just think—I will see
the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.
Think it over and over."
Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. "And—what if I forget to remember
all that? What if I get excited...?"
Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at
Irish.
Marnagan cursed. "All right, lad. Let's have at it!"
The monsters returned.
A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming
in malevolent anticipation about the two men.
"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a
sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!"
Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted
faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.
Marnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and
raised his gun and made quick moves with it. "Click! This one here!
It's real!" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense
frame slammed against rock, noiselessly.
Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the
helmet glass with his hands, shouting:
"Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into
your mind! It's not real, I tell you!"
"Click—" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.
"Click—" He was fighting hard. "I—I—sure now. Sure—" He smiled.
"It—it's only a shanty fake!"
"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up."
Marnagan's thick lips opened. "It's only a fake," he said. And then,
irritated, "Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!"
Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and
little bubbles danced in his eyes. "Irish,
you
forget the monsters.
Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might
forget."
Marnagan showed his teeth. "Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And
besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty."
The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.
Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.
"We'll be taking our chances on guard," hissed Irish. "I'll go ahead,
draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,
you
show up with
your
gun...."
"I haven't got one."
"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They
probably got scanners out. Let them see me—"
And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about
five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved
up, and there was a door opening in the rock.
His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. "A
door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!"
Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the
thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.
Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.
"All right, put 'em up!" a new harsh voice cried over a different
radio. One of Gunther's guards.
Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.
The strange harsh voice said, "That's better. Don't try and pick that
gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.
How'd you get past the animals?"
Click started running. He switched off his
sending
audio, kept his
receiving
on. Marnagan, weaponless.
One
guard. Click gasped. Things
were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running
and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:
"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles
and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!" Marnagan said. "But, damn you,
they killed my partner before he had a chance!"
The guard laughed.
The air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head
swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He
let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't
have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!
A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that
yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,
air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a
proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard
had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: "I think I'll let
you stand right there and die," he said quietly. "That what Gunther
wanted, anway. A nice sordid death."
Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.
"Don't move!" he snapped. "I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One
twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind
you! Freeze!"
The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped
his gun to the floor.
"Get his gun, Irish."
Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.
Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. "Thanks for
posing," he said. "That shot will go down in film history for candid
acting."
"What!"
"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door
leading into the Base?"
The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.
Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.
"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double
time! Double!"
Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on
their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,
hid him in a huge trash receptacle. "Where he belongs," observed Irish
tersely.
They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing
more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.
Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was
short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to
rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for
cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the
swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't
wanted. They were scared off.
The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of
intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film
with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them
into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.
"So here we are, still not much better off than we were," growled
Irish. "We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn
up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the
monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?"
"What good would that do?" Hathaway gnawed his lip. "They wouldn't fool
the engineers who created them, you nut."
Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. "Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come
riding over the hill—"
"Irish!" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. "Irish. The U.S.
Cavalry it is!" His eyes darted over the machines. "Here. Help me.
We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century."
Marnagan winced. "You breathing oxygen or whiskey?"
"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
"That's a silly question."
"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
"Impossible!"
"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
The Patrol was coming!
Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
|
How would you describe the pace of the characters, and why?
|
[
"Quickly. The characters were under a time constraint, depleting air, and were encountering additional threats that made them move with haste.",
"At a sprint. The characters were so scared that they were rushing decisions and they weren't thinking logically.",
"Average. Though the characters were concerned for their survival, they were taking things at a normal pace because they thought they could be rescued.",
"Slowly. The characters didn't want to endanger themselves further in the situation so they tried to think everything through fully."
] | 0 | false |
The Monster Maker
By RAY BRADBURY
"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It
was to laugh! For Click and Irish were
marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only
weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get
scared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening
to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a
damned sweet picture of everything that was happening.
The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,
wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the
dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this
meteor coming like blazing fury.
Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's
skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the
rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.
There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was
picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't
long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to
his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had
been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of
the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.
It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids
rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a
tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.
Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the
nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you
ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of
metal death. What a fade-out!
"Irish!" he heard himself say. "Is this IT?"
"Is this
what
?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.
"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?"
Marnagan fumed. "I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm
ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!"
They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of
gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.
The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over
and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled
around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,
air and energy flung out.
Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking
quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach
film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like
this
one! His
brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his
camera.
Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.
Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked
to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold
that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the
wreckage into that silence.
He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his
fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,
thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—"
A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven
feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.
"Hold it!" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera
whirred. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed
from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!"
"From the toe of me boot!" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders
flexed inside his vac-suit. "I might've died in there, and you nursin'
that film-contraption!"
Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. "I never thought of that.
Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always
have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to." Hathaway
stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he
couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,
pale. "Where are we?"
"A million miles from nobody."
They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that
stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.
Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look
sick.
"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking
hands the other side of this rock in two hours." Marnagan shook his mop
of dusty red hair. "And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd
capture that Gunther lad!"
His voice stopped and the silence spoke.
Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. "I checked
my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left."
The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric
rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply
mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or
was
suffocation a better death...?
Sixty minutes.
They stood and looked at one another.
"Damn that meteor!" said Marnagan, hotly.
Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:
"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked
it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.
Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've
got it here, on film."
Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. "It's not proof we need
now, Click. Oxygen. And then
food
. And then some way back to Earth."
Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: "This is Gunther's work. He's
here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.
Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back
to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate
whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins
through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by
yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice."
They started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a
bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't
much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.
Marnagan said, "We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat
with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got
fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll
be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all
you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any
words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about
it. As for me—" he twisted his glossy red face. "Keeping alive is me
hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order."
Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.
It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and
the crash this way."
Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far
down, and the green eyes blazed.
They stopped, together.
"Oops!" Click said.
"Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel
that
?"
Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and
limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"
They ran back. "Let's try it again."
They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.
"Gravity should not act this way, Click."
"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No
wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!
Gunther'd do anything to—did I say
anything
?"
Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand
came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable
horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with
numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some
tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along
in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.
Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke
cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed
after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in
Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt
the creatures at all.
"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline
toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"
Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're
too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out,
as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.
Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a
scene!"
"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"
"Use your gun."
"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,
eh, Click?"
"Yeah. Sure.
You
enjoyed it, every moment of it."
"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what
will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"
"Let me think—"
"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."
They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt
funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters
and Gunther and—
"Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a
blue one?"
Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,
now you've got
me
doing it. Joking in the face of death."
"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."
That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed
out.
Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but
sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take
me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."
Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All
this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."
"Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while
waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our
rescue!"
Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."
Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he
said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,
my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace
negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."
Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver
for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running
around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but
his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of
Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.
Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling
for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without
much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death
wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying
anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they
had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.
When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it
up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:
"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt
back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,
what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space
war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory
is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which
dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?
Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.
It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes
unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."
Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"
"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at
the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from
wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals
tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle
his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the
Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,
then."
"I don't see no Base around."
Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and
a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped
it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it
developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing
film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,
leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the
impressions. Quick stuff.
Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,
Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."
Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah,
Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."
"Huh?"
"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid
monsters complete."
"What!"
Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:
Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally
with
nothing
; Marnagan shooting his gun at
nothing
; Marnagan
pretending to be happy in front of
nothing
.
Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!
The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair
like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.
Maybe—
Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this
mess! Here—"
He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,
the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the
monsters weren't there, they weren't there.
"Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"
"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.
Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or
infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"
"Nuts! Any color
we
see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."
"Hey, where
you
going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man
tried pushing past him.
"Get out of the way," said Hathaway.
Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere,
it'll be me does the going."
"I can't let you do that, Irish."
"Why not?"
"You'd be going on my say-so."
"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?"
"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—"
"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand
aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their
bones." He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist
except under an inch of porous metal plate. "Your express purpose on
this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later
for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand
education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me
profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The
Lion's Den."
"Irish, I—"
"Shut up and load up."
Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.
"Ready, Click?"
"I—I guess so," said Hathaway. "And remember, think it hard, Irish.
Think it hard. There aren't any animals—"
"Keep me in focus, lad."
"All the way, Irish."
"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!"
Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,
two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were
waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.
Right out into the middle of them....
That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the
monsters!
Only now it was only Marnagan.
No more monsters.
Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. "Hey, Click, look
at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and
ran away!"
"Ran, hell!" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and
animated. "They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative
figments!"
"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you
coward!"
"Smile when you say that, Irish."
"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in
your sweet grey eyes?"
"Damn," swore the photographer, embarrassedly. "Why don't they put
window-wipers in these helmets?"
"I'll take it up with the Board, lad."
"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one
hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part
of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back
into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing
suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals
kill them."
"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill."
"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could
have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If
that isn't being dangerous—"
The Irishman whistled.
"But, we've got to
move
, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.
In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,
Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters." Click
attached his camera to his mid-belt. "Gunther probably thinks we're
dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never
had a chance to disbelieve them."
"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—"
"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—" Click
stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and
felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady
himself, and swayed. "I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.
This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick."
Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. "Hold tight, Click. The
guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach."
"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals
came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come
back!"
"Come back? How?"
"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we
believe in them again, they'll return."
Marnagan didn't like it. "Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if
we believe in 'em?"
Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. "Not if we believe
in them to a
certain point
. Psychologically they can both be seen and
felt. We only want to
see
them coming at us again."
"
Do
we, now?"
"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—"
"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?"
Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. "Just think—I will see
the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.
Think it over and over."
Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. "And—what if I forget to remember
all that? What if I get excited...?"
Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at
Irish.
Marnagan cursed. "All right, lad. Let's have at it!"
The monsters returned.
A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming
in malevolent anticipation about the two men.
"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a
sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!"
Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted
faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.
Marnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and
raised his gun and made quick moves with it. "Click! This one here!
It's real!" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense
frame slammed against rock, noiselessly.
Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the
helmet glass with his hands, shouting:
"Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into
your mind! It's not real, I tell you!"
"Click—" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.
"Click—" He was fighting hard. "I—I—sure now. Sure—" He smiled.
"It—it's only a shanty fake!"
"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up."
Marnagan's thick lips opened. "It's only a fake," he said. And then,
irritated, "Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!"
Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and
little bubbles danced in his eyes. "Irish,
you
forget the monsters.
Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might
forget."
Marnagan showed his teeth. "Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And
besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty."
The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.
Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.
"We'll be taking our chances on guard," hissed Irish. "I'll go ahead,
draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,
you
show up with
your
gun...."
"I haven't got one."
"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They
probably got scanners out. Let them see me—"
And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about
five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved
up, and there was a door opening in the rock.
His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. "A
door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!"
Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the
thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.
Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.
"All right, put 'em up!" a new harsh voice cried over a different
radio. One of Gunther's guards.
Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.
The strange harsh voice said, "That's better. Don't try and pick that
gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.
How'd you get past the animals?"
Click started running. He switched off his
sending
audio, kept his
receiving
on. Marnagan, weaponless.
One
guard. Click gasped. Things
were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running
and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:
"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles
and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!" Marnagan said. "But, damn you,
they killed my partner before he had a chance!"
The guard laughed.
The air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head
swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He
let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't
have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!
A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that
yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,
air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a
proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard
had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: "I think I'll let
you stand right there and die," he said quietly. "That what Gunther
wanted, anway. A nice sordid death."
Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.
"Don't move!" he snapped. "I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One
twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind
you! Freeze!"
The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped
his gun to the floor.
"Get his gun, Irish."
Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.
Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. "Thanks for
posing," he said. "That shot will go down in film history for candid
acting."
"What!"
"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door
leading into the Base?"
The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.
Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.
"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double
time! Double!"
Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on
their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,
hid him in a huge trash receptacle. "Where he belongs," observed Irish
tersely.
They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing
more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.
Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was
short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to
rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for
cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the
swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't
wanted. They were scared off.
The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of
intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film
with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them
into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.
"So here we are, still not much better off than we were," growled
Irish. "We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn
up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the
monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?"
"What good would that do?" Hathaway gnawed his lip. "They wouldn't fool
the engineers who created them, you nut."
Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. "Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come
riding over the hill—"
"Irish!" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. "Irish. The U.S.
Cavalry it is!" His eyes darted over the machines. "Here. Help me.
We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century."
Marnagan winced. "You breathing oxygen or whiskey?"
"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
"That's a silly question."
"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
"Impossible!"
"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
The Patrol was coming!
Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
|
What is not a type technology that is used in this story?
|
[
"Tasers that paralyze individuals and render them unconscious",
"Highly advanced space travel",
"Tools that allow one to distort how someone else perceives reality",
"Filming devices"
] | 0 | true |
The Monster Maker
By RAY BRADBURY
"Get Gunther," the official orders read. It
was to laugh! For Click and Irish were
marooned on the pirate's asteroid—their only
weapons a single gun and a news-reel camera.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1944.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Suddenly, it was there. There wasn't time to blink or speak or get
scared. Click Hathaway's camera was loaded and he stood there listening
to it rack-spin film between his fingers, and he knew he was getting a
damned sweet picture of everything that was happening.
The picture of Marnagan hunched huge over the control-console,
wrenching levers, jamming studs with freckled fists. And out in the
dark of the fore-part there was space and a star-sprinkling and this
meteor coming like blazing fury.
Click Hathaway felt the ship move under him like a sensitive animal's
skin. And then the meteor hit. It made a spiked fist and knocked the
rear-jets flat, and the ship spun like a cosmic merry-go-round.
There was plenty of noise. Too damned much. Hathaway only knew he was
picked up and hurled against a lever-bank, and that Marnagan wasn't
long in following, swearing loud words. Click remembered hanging on to
his camera and gritting to keep holding it. What a sweet shot that had
been of the meteor! A sweeter one still of Marnagan beating hell out of
the controls and keeping his words to himself until just now.
It got quiet. It got so quiet you could almost hear the asteroids
rushing up, cold, blue and hard. You could hear your heart kicking a
tom-tom between your sick stomach and your empty lungs.
Stars, asteroids revolved. Click grabbed Marnagan because he was the
nearest thing, and held on. You came hunting for a space-raider and you
ended up cradled in a slab-sized Irishman's arms, diving at a hunk of
metal death. What a fade-out!
"Irish!" he heard himself say. "Is this IT?"
"Is this
what
?" yelled Marnagan inside his helmet.
"Is this where the Big Producer yells CUT!?"
Marnagan fumed. "I'll die when I'm damned good and ready. And when I'm
ready I'll inform you and you can picture me profile for Cosmic Films!"
They both waited, thrust against the shipside and held by a hand of
gravity; listening to each other's breathing hard in the earphones.
The ship struck, once. Bouncing, it struck again. It turned end over
and stopped. Hathaway felt himself grabbed; he and Marnagan rattled
around—human dice in a croupier's cup. The shell of the ship burst,
air and energy flung out.
Hathaway screamed the air out of his lungs, but his brain was thinking
quick crazy, unimportant things. The best scenes in life never reach
film, or an audience. Like this one, dammit! Like
this
one! His
brain spun, racketing like the instantaneous, flicking motions of his
camera.
Silence came and engulfed all the noise, ate it up and swallowed it.
Hathaway shook his head, instinctively grabbed at the camera locked
to his mid-belt. There was nothing but stars, twisted wreckage, cold
that pierced through his vac-suit, and silence. He wriggled out of the
wreckage into that silence.
He didn't know what he was doing until he found the camera in his
fingers as if it had grown there when he was born. He stood there,
thinking "Well, I'll at least have a few good scenes on film. I'll—"
A hunk of metal teetered, fell with a crash. Marnagan elevated seven
feet of bellowing manhood from the wreck.
"Hold it!" cracked Hathaway's high voice. Marnagan froze. The camera
whirred. "Low angle shot; Interplanetary Patrolman emerges unscathed
from asteroid crackup. Swell stuff. I'll get a raise for this!"
"From the toe of me boot!" snarled Marnagan brusquely. Oxen shoulders
flexed inside his vac-suit. "I might've died in there, and you nursin'
that film-contraption!"
Hathaway felt funny inside, suddenly. "I never thought of that.
Marnagan die? I just took it for granted you'd come through. You always
have. Funny, but you don't think about dying. You try not to." Hathaway
stared at his gloved hand, but the gloving was so thick and heavy he
couldn't tell if it was shaking. Muscles in his bony face went down,
pale. "Where are we?"
"A million miles from nobody."
They stood in the middle of a pocked, time-eroded meteor plain that
stretched off, dipping down into silent indigo and a rash of stars.
Overhead, the sun poised; black and stars all around it, making it look
sick.
"If we walk in opposite directions, Click Hathaway, we'd be shaking
hands the other side of this rock in two hours." Marnagan shook his mop
of dusty red hair. "And I promised the boys at Luna Base this time I'd
capture that Gunther lad!"
His voice stopped and the silence spoke.
Hathaway felt his heart pumping slow, hot pumps of blood. "I checked
my oxygen, Irish. Sixty minutes of breathing left."
The silence punctuated that sentence, too. Upon the sharp meteoric
rocks Hathaway saw the tangled insides of the radio, the food supply
mashed and scattered. They were lucky to have escaped. Or
was
suffocation a better death...?
Sixty minutes.
They stood and looked at one another.
"Damn that meteor!" said Marnagan, hotly.
Hathaway got hold of an idea; remembering something. He said it out:
"Somebody tossed that meteor, Irish. I took a picture of it, looked
it right in the eye when it rolled at us, and it was poker-hot.
Space-meteors are never hot and glowing. If it's proof you want, I've
got it here, on film."
Marnagan winced his freckled square of face. "It's not proof we need
now, Click. Oxygen. And then
food
. And then some way back to Earth."
Hathaway went on saying his thoughts: "This is Gunther's work. He's
here somewhere, probably laughing his guts out at the job he did us.
Oh, God, this would make great news-release stuff if we ever get back
to Earth. I.P.'s Irish Marnagan, temporarily indisposed by a pirate
whose dirty face has never been seen, Gunther by name, finally wins
through to a triumphant finish. Photographed on the spot, in color, by
yours truly, Click Hathaway. Cosmic Films, please notice."
They started walking, fast, over the pocked, rubbled plain toward a
bony ridge of metal. They kept their eyes wide and awake. There wasn't
much to see, but it was better than standing still, waiting.
Marnagan said, "We're working on margin, and we got nothin' to sweat
with except your suspicions about this not being an accident. We got
fifty minutes to prove you're right. After that—right or wrong—you'll
be Cosmic Films prettiest unmoving, unbreathin' genius. But talk all
you like, Click. It's times like this when we all need words, any
words, on our tongues. You got your camera and your scoop. Talk about
it. As for me—" he twisted his glossy red face. "Keeping alive is me
hobby. And this sort of two-bit death I did not order."
Click nodded. "Gunther knows how you'd hate dying this way, Irish.
It's irony clean through. That's probably why he planned the meteor and
the crash this way."
Marnagan said nothing, but his thick lips went down at the corners, far
down, and the green eyes blazed.
They stopped, together.
"Oops!" Click said.
"Hey!" Marnagan blinked. "Did you feel
that
?"
Hathaway's body felt feathery, light as a whisper, boneless and
limbless, suddenly. "Irish! We lost weight, coming over that ridge!"
They ran back. "Let's try it again."
They tried it. They scowled at each other. The same thing happened.
"Gravity should not act this way, Click."
"Are you telling me? It's man-made. Better than that—it's Gunther! No
wonder we fell so fast—we were dragged down by a super-gravity set-up!
Gunther'd do anything to—did I say
anything
?"
Hathaway leaped backward in reaction. His eyes widened and his hand
came up, jabbing. Over a hill-ridge swarmed a brew of unbelievable
horrors. Progeny from Frankenstein's ARK. Immense crimson beasts with
numerous legs and gnashing mandibles, brown-black creatures, some
tubular and fat, others like thin white poisonous whips slashing along
in the air. Fangs caught starlight white on them.
Hathaway yelled and ran, Marnagan at his heels, lumbering. Sweat broke
cold on his body. The immense things rolled, slithered and squirmed
after him. A blast of light. Marnagan, firing his proton-gun. Then, in
Click's ears, the Irishman's incredulous bellow. The gun didn't hurt
the creatures at all.
"Irish!" Hathaway flung himself over the ridge, slid down an incline
toward the mouth a small cave. "This way, fella!"
Hathaway made it first, Marnagan bellowing just behind him. "They're
too big; they can't get us in here!" Click's voice gasped it out,
as Marnagan squeezed his two-hundred-fifty pounds beside him.
Instinctively, Hathaway added, "Asteroid monsters! My camera! What a
scene!"
"Damn your damn camera!" yelled Marnagan. "They might come in!"
"Use your gun."
"They got impervious hides. No use. Gahh! And that was a pretty chase,
eh, Click?"
"Yeah. Sure.
You
enjoyed it, every moment of it."
"I did that." Irish grinned, showing white uneven teeth. "Now, what
will we be doing with these uninvited guests at our door?"
"Let me think—"
"Lots of time, little man. Forty more minutes of air, to be exact."
They sat, staring at the monsters for about a minute. Hathaway felt
funny about something; didn't know what. Something about these monsters
and Gunther and—
"Which one will you be having?" asked Irish, casually. "A red one or a
blue one?"
Hathaway laughed nervously. "A pink one with yellow ruffles—Good God,
now you've got
me
doing it. Joking in the face of death."
"Me father taught me; keep laughing and you'll have Irish luck."
That didn't please the photographer. "I'm an Anglo-Swede," he pointed
out.
Marnagan shifted uneasily. "Here, now. You're doing nothing but
sitting, looking like a little boy locked in a bedroom closet, so take
me a profile shot of the beasties and myself."
Hathaway petted his camera reluctantly. "What in hell's the use? All
this swell film shot. Nobody'll ever see it."
"Then," retorted Marnagan, "we'll develop it for our own benefit; while
waitin' for the U.S. Cavalry to come riding over the hill to our
rescue!"
Hathaway snorted. "U.S. Cavalry."
Marnagan raised his proton-gun dramatically. "Snap me this pose," he
said. "I paid your salary to trot along, photographing, we hoped,
my capture of Gunther, now the least you can do is record peace
negotiations betwixt me and these pixies."
Marnagan wasn't fooling anybody. Hathaway knew the superficial palaver
for nothing but a covering over the fast, furious thinking running
around in that red-cropped skull. Hathaway played the palaver, too, but
his mind was whirring faster than his camera as he spun a picture of
Marnagan standing there with a useless gun pointed at the animals.
Montage. Marnagan sitting, chatting at the monsters. Marnagan smiling
for the camera. Marnagan in profile. Marnagan looking grim, without
much effort, for the camera. And then, a closeup of the thrashing death
wall that holed them in. Click took them all, those shots, not saying
anything. Nobody fooled nobody with this act. Death was near and they
had sweaty faces, dry mouths and frozen guts.
When Click finished filming, Irish sat down to save oxygen, and used it
up arguing about Gunther. Click came back at him:
"Gunther drew us down here, sure as Ceres! That gravity change we felt
back on that ridge, Irish; that proves it. Gunther's short on men. So,
what's he do; he builds an asteroid-base, and drags ships down. Space
war isn't perfect yet, guns don't prime true in space, trajectory
is lousy over long distances. So what's the best weapon, which
dispenses with losing valuable, rare ships and a small bunch of men?
Super-gravity and a couple of well-tossed meteors. Saves all around.
It's a good front, this damned iron pebble. From it, Gunther strikes
unseen; ships simply crash, that's all. A subtle hand, with all aces."
Marnagan rumbled. "Where is the dirty son, then!"
"He didn't have to appear, Irish. He sent—them." Hathaway nodded at
the beasts. "People crashing here die from air-lack, no food, or from
wounds caused at the crackup. If they survive all that—the animals
tend to them. It all looks like Nature was responsible. See how subtle
his attack is? Looks like accidental death instead of murder, if the
Patrol happens to land and finds us. No reason for undue investigation,
then."
"I don't see no Base around."
Click shrugged. "Still doubt it? Okay. Look." He tapped his camera and
a spool popped out onto his gloved palm. Holding it up, he stripped
it out to its full twenty inch length, held it to the light while it
developed, smiling. It was one of his best inventions. Self-developing
film. The first light struck film-surface, destroyed one chemical,
leaving imprints; the second exposure simply hardened, secured the
impressions. Quick stuff.
Inserting the film-tongue into a micro-viewer in the camera's base,
Click handed the whole thing over. "Look."
Marnagan put the viewer up against the helmet glass, squinted. "Ah,
Click. Now, now. This is one lousy film you invented."
"Huh?"
"It's a strange process'll develop my picture and ignore the asteroid
monsters complete."
"What!"
Hathaway grabbed the camera, gasped, squinted, and gasped again:
Pictures in montage; Marnagan sitting down, chatting conversationally
with
nothing
; Marnagan shooting his gun at
nothing
; Marnagan
pretending to be happy in front of
nothing
.
Then, closeup—of—NOTHING!
The monsters had failed to image the film. Marnagan was there, his hair
like a red banner, his freckled face with the blue eyes bright in it.
Maybe—
Hathaway said it, loud: "Irish! Irish! I think I see a way out of this
mess! Here—"
He elucidated it over and over again to the Patrolman. About the film,
the beasts, and how the film couldn't be wrong. If the film said the
monsters weren't there, they weren't there.
"Yeah," said Marnagan. "But step outside this cave—"
"If my theory is correct I'll do it, unafraid," said Click.
Marnagan scowled. "You sure them beasts don't radiate ultra-violet or
infra-red or something that won't come out on film?"
"Nuts! Any color
we
see, the camera sees. We've been fooled."
"Hey, where
you
going?" Marnagan blocked Hathaway as the smaller man
tried pushing past him.
"Get out of the way," said Hathaway.
Marnagan put his big fists on his hips. "If anyone is going anywhere,
it'll be me does the going."
"I can't let you do that, Irish."
"Why not?"
"You'd be going on my say-so."
"Ain't your say-so good enough for me?"
"Yes. Sure. Of course. I guess—"
"If you say them animals ain't there, that's all I need. Now, stand
aside, you film-developing flea, and let an Irishman settle their
bones." He took an unnecessary hitch in trousers that didn't exist
except under an inch of porous metal plate. "Your express purpose on
this voyage, Hathaway, is taking films to be used by the Patrol later
for teaching Junior Patrolmen how to act in tough spots. First-hand
education. Poke another spool of film in that contraption and give me
profile a scan. This is lesson number seven: Daniel Walks Into The
Lion's Den."
"Irish, I—"
"Shut up and load up."
Hathaway nervously loaded the film-slot, raised it.
"Ready, Click?"
"I—I guess so," said Hathaway. "And remember, think it hard, Irish.
Think it hard. There aren't any animals—"
"Keep me in focus, lad."
"All the way, Irish."
"What do they say...? Oh, yeah. Action. Lights. Camera!"
Marnagan held his gun out in front of him and still smiling took one,
two, three, four steps out into the outside world. The monsters were
waiting for him at the fifth step. Marnagan kept walking.
Right out into the middle of them....
That was the sweetest shot Hathaway ever took. Marnagan and the
monsters!
Only now it was only Marnagan.
No more monsters.
Marnagan smiled a smile broader than his shoulders. "Hey, Click, look
at me! I'm in one piece. Why, hell, the damned things turned tail and
ran away!"
"Ran, hell!" cried Hathaway, rushing out, his face flushed and
animated. "They just plain vanished. They were only imaginative
figments!"
"And to think we let them hole us in that way, Click Hathaway, you
coward!"
"Smile when you say that, Irish."
"Sure, and ain't I always smilin'? Ah, Click boy, are them tears in
your sweet grey eyes?"
"Damn," swore the photographer, embarrassedly. "Why don't they put
window-wipers in these helmets?"
"I'll take it up with the Board, lad."
"Forget it. I was so blamed glad to see your homely carcass in one
hunk, I couldn't help—Look, now, about Gunther. Those animals are part
of his set-up. Explorers who land here inadvertently, are chased back
into their ships, forced to take off. Tourists and the like. Nothing
suspicious about animals. And if the tourists don't leave, the animals
kill them."
"Shaw, now. Those animals can't kill."
"Think not, Mr. Marnagan? As long as we believed in them they could
have frightened us to death, forced us, maybe, to commit suicide. If
that isn't being dangerous—"
The Irishman whistled.
"But, we've got to
move
, Irish. We've got twenty minutes of oxygen.
In that time we've got to trace those monsters to their source,
Gunther's Base, fight our way in, and get fresh oxy-cannisters." Click
attached his camera to his mid-belt. "Gunther probably thinks we're
dead by now. Everyone else's been fooled by his playmates; they never
had a chance to disbelieve them."
"If it hadn't been for you taking them pictures, Click—"
"Coupled with your damned stubborn attitude about the accident—" Click
stopped and felt his insides turning to water. He shook his head and
felt a film slip down over his eyes. He spread his legs out to steady
himself, and swayed. "I—I don't think my oxygen is as full as yours.
This excitement had me double-breathing and I feel sick."
Marnagan's homely face grimaced in sympathy. "Hold tight, Click. The
guy that invented these fish-bowls didn't provide for a sick stomach."
"Hold tight, hell, let's move. We've got to find where those animals
came from! And the only way to do that is to get the animals to come
back!"
"Come back? How?"
"They're waiting, just outside the aura of our thoughts, and if we
believe in them again, they'll return."
Marnagan didn't like it. "Won't—won't they kill us—if they come—if
we believe in 'em?"
Hathaway shook a head that was tons heavy and weary. "Not if we believe
in them to a
certain point
. Psychologically they can both be seen and
felt. We only want to
see
them coming at us again."
"
Do
we, now?"
"With twenty minutes left, maybe less—"
"All right, Click, let's bring 'em back. How do we do it?"
Hathaway fought against the mist in his eyes. "Just think—I will see
the monsters again. I will see them again and I will not feel them.
Think it over and over."
Marnagan's hulk stirred uneasily. "And—what if I forget to remember
all that? What if I get excited...?"
Hathaway didn't answer. But his eyes told the story by just looking at
Irish.
Marnagan cursed. "All right, lad. Let's have at it!"
The monsters returned.
A soundless deluge of them, pouring over the rubbled horizon, swarming
in malevolent anticipation about the two men.
"This way, Irish. They come from this way! There's a focal point, a
sending station for these telepathic brutes. Come on!"
Hathaway sludged into the pressing tide of color, mouths, contorted
faces, silvery fat bodies misting as he plowed through them.
Marnagan was making good progress ahead of Hathaway. But he stopped and
raised his gun and made quick moves with it. "Click! This one here!
It's real!" He fell back and something struck him down. His immense
frame slammed against rock, noiselessly.
Hathaway darted forward, flung his body over Marnagan's, covered the
helmet glass with his hands, shouting:
"Marnagan! Get a grip, dammit! It's not real—don't let it force into
your mind! It's not real, I tell you!"
"Click—" Marnagan's face was a bitter, tortured movement behind glass.
"Click—" He was fighting hard. "I—I—sure now. Sure—" He smiled.
"It—it's only a shanty fake!"
"Keep saying it, Irish. Keep it up."
Marnagan's thick lips opened. "It's only a fake," he said. And then,
irritated, "Get the hell off me, Hathaway. Let me up to my feet!"
Hathaway got up, shakily. The air in his helmet smelled stale, and
little bubbles danced in his eyes. "Irish,
you
forget the monsters.
Let me handle them, I know how. They might fool you again, you might
forget."
Marnagan showed his teeth. "Gah! Let a flea have all the fun? And
besides, Click, I like to look at them. They're pretty."
The outpour of animals came from a low lying mound a mile farther on.
Evidently the telepathic source lay there. They approached it warily.
"We'll be taking our chances on guard," hissed Irish. "I'll go ahead,
draw their attention, maybe get captured. Then,
you
show up with
your
gun...."
"I haven't got one."
"We'll chance it, then. You stick here until I see what's ahead. They
probably got scanners out. Let them see me—"
And before Hathaway could object, Marnagan walked off. He walked about
five hundred yards, bent down, applied his fingers to something, heaved
up, and there was a door opening in the rock.
His voice came back across the distance, into Click's earphones. "A
door, an air-lock, Click. A tunnel leading down inside!"
Then, Marnagan dropped into the tunnel, disappearing. Click heard the
thud of his feet hitting the metal flooring.
Click sucked in his breath, hard and fast.
"All right, put 'em up!" a new harsh voice cried over a different
radio. One of Gunther's guards.
Three shots sizzled out, and Marnagan bellowed.
The strange harsh voice said, "That's better. Don't try and pick that
gun up now. Oh, so it's you. I thought Gunther had finished you off.
How'd you get past the animals?"
Click started running. He switched off his
sending
audio, kept his
receiving
on. Marnagan, weaponless.
One
guard. Click gasped. Things
were getting dark. Had to have air. Air. Air. He ran and kept running
and listening to Marnagan's lying voice:
"I tied them pink elephants of Gunther's in neat alphabetical bundles
and stacked them up to dry, ya louse!" Marnagan said. "But, damn you,
they killed my partner before he had a chance!"
The guard laughed.
The air-lock door was still wide open when Click reached it, his head
swimming darkly, his lungs crammed with pain-fire and hell-rockets. He
let himself down in, quiet and soft. He didn't have a weapon. He didn't
have a weapon. Oh, damn, damn!
A tunnel curved, ending in light, and two men silhouetted in that
yellow glare. Marnagan, backed against a wall, his helmet cracked,
air hissing slowly out of it, his face turning blue. And the guard, a
proton gun extended stiffly before him, also in a vac-suit. The guard
had his profile toward Hathaway, his lips twisting: "I think I'll let
you stand right there and die," he said quietly. "That what Gunther
wanted, anway. A nice sordid death."
Hathaway took three strides, his hands out in front of him.
"Don't move!" he snapped. "I've got a weapon stronger than yours. One
twitch and I'll blast you and the whole damned wall out from behind
you! Freeze!"
The guard whirled. He widened his sharp eyes, and reluctantly, dropped
his gun to the floor.
"Get his gun, Irish."
Marnagan made as if to move, crumpled clumsily forward.
Hathaway ran in, snatched up the gun, smirked at the guard. "Thanks for
posing," he said. "That shot will go down in film history for candid
acting."
"What!"
"Ah: ah! Keep your place. I've got a real gun now. Where's the door
leading into the Base?"
The guard moved his head sullenly over his left shoulder.
Click was afraid he would show his weak dizziness. He needed air.
"Okay. Drag Marnagan with you, open the door and we'll have air. Double
time! Double!"
Ten minutes later, Marnagan and Hathaway, fresh tanks of oxygen on
their backs, Marnagan in a fresh bulger and helmet, trussed the guard,
hid him in a huge trash receptacle. "Where he belongs," observed Irish
tersely.
They found themselves in a complete inner world; an asteroid nothing
more than a honey-comb fortress sliding through the void unchallenged.
Perfect front for a raider who had little equipment and was
short-handed of men. Gunther simply waited for specific cargo ships to
rocket by, pulled them or knocked them down and swarmed over them for
cargo. The animals served simply to insure against suspicion and the
swarms of tourists that filled the void these days. Small fry weren't
wanted. They were scared off.
The telepathic sending station for the animals was a great bank of
intricate, glittering machine, through which strips of colored film
with images slid into slots and machine mouths that translated them
into thought-emanations. A damned neat piece of genius.
"So here we are, still not much better off than we were," growled
Irish. "We haven't a ship or a space-radio, and more guards'll turn
up any moment. You think we could refocus this doohingey, project the
monsters inside the asteroid to fool the pirates themselves?"
"What good would that do?" Hathaway gnawed his lip. "They wouldn't fool
the engineers who created them, you nut."
Marnagan exhaled disgustedly. "Ah, if only the U.S. Cavalry would come
riding over the hill—"
"Irish!" Hathaway snapped that, his face lighting up. "Irish. The U.S.
Cavalry it is!" His eyes darted over the machines. "Here. Help me.
We'll stage everything on the most colossal raid of the century."
Marnagan winced. "You breathing oxygen or whiskey?"
"There's only one stipulation I make, Irish. I want a complete picture
of Marnagan capturing Raider's Base. I want a picture of Gunther's face
when you do it. Snap it, now, we've got rush work to do. How good an
actor are you?"
"That's a silly question."
"You only have to do three things. Walk with your gun out in front of
you, firing. That's number one. Number two is to clutch at your heart
and fall down dead. Number three is to clutch at your side, fall down
and twitch on the ground. Is that clear?"
"Clear as the Coal Sack Nebula...."
An hour later Hathaway trudged down a passageway that led out into a
sort of city street inside the asteroid. There were about six streets,
lined with cube houses in yellow metal, ending near Hathaway in a
wide, green-lawned Plaza.
Hathaway, weaponless, idly carrying his camera in one hand, walked
across the Plaza as if he owned it. He was heading for a building that
was pretentious enough to be Gunther's quarters.
He got halfway there when he felt a gun in his back.
He didn't resist. They took him straight ahead to his destination and
pushed him into a room where Gunther sat.
Hathaway looked at him. "So you're Gunther?" he said, calmly. The
pirate was incredibly old, his bulging forehead stood out over sunken,
questioningly dark eyes, and his scrawny body was lost in folds of
metal-link cloth. He glanced up from a paper-file, surprised. Before he
could speak, Hathaway said:
"Everything's over with, Mr. Gunther. The Patrol is in the city now and
we're capturing your Base. Don't try to fight. We've a thousand men
against your eighty-five."
Gunther sat there, blinking at Hathaway, not moving. His thin hands
twitched in his lap. "You are bluffing," he said, finally, with a firm
directness. "A ship hasn't landed here for an hour. Your ship was the
last. Two people were on it. The last I saw of them they were being
pursued to the death by the Beasts. One of you escaped, it seemed."
"Both. The other guy went after the Patrol."
"Impossible!"
"I can't respect your opinion, Mr. Gunther."
A shouting rose from the Plaza. About fifty of Gunther's men, lounging
on carved benches during their time-off, stirred to their feet and
started yelling. Gunther turned slowly to the huge window in one side
of his office. He stared, hard.
The Patrol was coming!
Across the Plaza, marching quietly and decisively, came the Patrol.
Five hundred Patrolmen in one long, incredible line, carrying paralysis
guns with them in their tight hands.
Gunther babbled like a child, his voice a shrill dagger in the air.
"Get out there, you men! Throw them back! We're outnumbered!"
Guns flared. But the Patrol came on. Gunther's men didn't run, Hathaway
had to credit them on that. They took it, standing.
Hathaway chuckled inside, deep. What a sweet, sweet shot this was.
His camera whirred, clicked and whirred again. Nobody stopped him
from filming it. Everything was too wild, hot and angry. Gunther was
throwing a fit, still seated at his desk, unable to move because of his
fragile, bony legs and their atrophied state.
Some of the Patrol were killed. Hathaway chuckled again as he saw three
of the Patrolmen clutch at their hearts, crumple, lie on the ground and
twitch. God, what photography!
Gunther raged, and swept a small pistol from his linked corselet. He
fired wildly until Hathaway hit him over the head with a paper-weight.
Then Hathaway took a picture of Gunther slumped at his desk, the chaos
taking place immediately outside his window.
The pirates broke and fled, those that were left. A mere handful. And
out of the chaos came Marnagan's voice, "Here!"
|
What are Hathaway and Marnagan's physiques like?
|
[
"There isn't much discussion about how either person looks at all.",
"Marnagan is consistently described as feeble in comparison to Hathaway.",
"Both of their appearances are described to some degree, and Marnagan is often described as being a large presence.",
"Both are each regularly described as having similar builds."
] | 2 | true |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.